Erratics on the Road to Wigan Pier

This paper focuses on the augmented reality project TouchAR to reveal creative collaborative approaches the authors took to site, technology, ecology, and gesture in their production of interactive public realm artworks in direct response to the Covid19 pandemic. Informed by the uncanny (re-animation, the double) ontology (affect, sensing embodied encounter) and ecology (speculative fabulation, deep time), the project explores 3D scanning and AR technology as tools for transformation and engagement with ecological deep time; addressing complications involved in offering an embodied experience with AR and as a means of enchantment. The authors will discuss how they use technology to suture analogue and computational art making, explore ideas of touch and engagement with ecology in a technological society and address the deep past, present challenges and possible futures.