Ten tech innovation companies and entrepreneurs have been awarded funding from the ‘Augment the City’ competition to help enrich the Belfast region’s visitor experiences.
They will work with the region’s tourism partners to explore how immersive technology can be used in innovative ways to encourage local people to create and share their individual stories.
Immersive technologies such as augmented, virtual, and mixed reality, are seen as having an important role to play in enhancing future attractions across the region, including the highly anticipated Belfast Stories project.
The projects being supported in this first phase of ‘Augment the City’ are:
- Belfast Stories Generator: Hamilton Robson will combine AI and immersive tech to create an accessible, interactive platform for exploring the city’s vibrant history and culture.
- Echoes of Belfast: Imvizar will focus on location-based AR to recreate and share Belfast’s historical and contemporary narratives. This initiative will create a dynamic story engine, allowing anyone with a story the opportunity to have their voice heard using immersive technology.
- Yarns, Craic, and Danders: Darin Smyth will utilise AI, Metahumans, AR, and game engine technology to create immersive experiences in interactive booths and a complementary AR guide. These experiences will enhance exploratory walks and inspire users to engage with and discover the city’s rich stories.
- SIGN: Aura Digital Studios will help to empower the deaf and hearing-impaired community to share their stories both locally and globally using haptics and AR technologies in a dedicated physical space equipped for motion capture, via a mobile app using AR, and through a network of visual triggers and QR codes guiding an independent walking tour across Belfast, linking audiences to site-specific performances.
- Belfast Memory Machine: SENSEcity will develop an AI-Powered Immersive Storytelling Experience using advanced technology to capture the rich tapestry of Belfast’s stories from lesser heard voices. Participant storytellers will be provided with 3D-printed miniaturised models of Belfast buildings and landmarks, e-ink displays, and a smart microphone, all providing a tactile and interactive experience, while they narrate their stories.
- Amergin: Liquid City will develop an AI-powered interviewer, archivist, curator, and broadcaster accessible on social media, the web, mixed reality, and in a visitor centre.
- Storyfields: Animorph will develop an innovative platform to allow residents to create and share immersive storytelling experiences using their smartphones in an interactive treasure hunt. Designated areas in Belfast will become Storyfields where users ‘plant’ their personal stories and discover those planted by others.
- Belfast Back Beats: Cooperative Innovations and The Performance Corporation is an artistic/technology collaboration aiming to develop interactive virtual environments to showcase transformative moments in Belfast’s performing arts and music scene, integrating real-world artefacts into virtual environments providing tangible connections to the city’s cultural history.
- Perspectives: Neurotech and Belfast Hidden Tours, in collaboration with artist Mark Mullan, will create an interactive mythology and history tour app, allowing users to experience first-person stories, and contribute their own narratives, thoughts, and reactions. The project will have a particular focus on children and young people, including those who are neurodiverse or have other accessibility needs.
- Memory Fractal: Ekaterina Solomatina will combine mixed reality and 5G technology to create a narrative sculpture, offering a new way of digital storytelling about the city’s vibrant artistic heritage. As well as visitors experiencing the space they are physically in, they will interact with virtual 3D-scanned and AI/community generated sculptures.
In phase two of Augment the City, five of the companies will receive additional funding to further develop their concepts this autumn.
The Augment the City Challenge competition is part of Belfast City Council’s XR Belfast programme which provides a range of funding, skills development and business support to people working in Belfast’s innovation and creative industries sectors to help build their capacity in using and exploiting emerging technologies. For more information visit www.smartbelfast.city
