Adriano Farano

Quadmented combines AR and storytelling

I was so excited about the news that OWNI is a finalist at SXSW Accelerator that I was forgetting to tell you:

The augmented reality layer “Quadmented — the history of Stanford’s Main Quad augmented” is now on and available through the Layar app! Click here to see Quadmented (works with a smartphone once you have installed Layar).

Quadmented is born in the framework of my Knight fellowship at Stanford, where I’m working on how to combine journalism and augmented reality. Quadmented is a test project I have designed with Gene Becker, Ubistudio meetup creator and Layar US employee #1. Thanks a million to Gene!

Focused on the very iconic cradle of Stanford University, the Main Quadrilater or ‘Main Quad’, Quadmented aims to experiment ways to use AR for mobile storytelling. The idea was to assemble 20 representative moments of Main Quad’s and Stanford’s history through pictures, videos, audio files, text and hyperlinks.

So, even if you’re not at Stanford let me share with you a couple of stories about this.

You can see here the Memorial Arch Jane Stanford had built in memory of his husband. It was completed only in 1905…

… and badly damaged during the San Francisco earthquake the following year. And dismantled shortly after. It’s a sad story. But many think it was an ugly entrance for the Quad.

This is a funny collateral damage of 1906 earthquake. The statue that you can today see on the top of Jordan Hall fell into the ground just like that…

Another effect of the earthquake was that the steeple of Memorial Church was dismantled too.

Stanford was born as a very progressive university where females got to represent more than 40% of the student body until the day when founder Jane Stanford decided to fix a quota to limit their presence on campus which will be lifted only after the Great Depression as part of a stimulus to the university’s recovery.

In these floating images you can the main renovation of the Quad in the 90s, the university’s cornerstone being laid in the Quad by founder Leland Stanford in 1887 and the reserve officers (ROTC) marching in the Quad in 1917 in the middle of the First World War. If you touch this picture you can get a link to the ROTC definition and to an article from the Bay Citizen about today’s debate on ROTC return to campus. I love crating bridges between the past and the present.

Indeed, the reserve officers will be banned from campus in the middle of anti-Vietnam protests… A propos, these two pictures illustrate how the Main Quad lived those tense times. On your left, the President of the university Pitzer tries to dialogue with protesters in 1968. He will leave his position shortly after. His successor, Lyman, will start his new job with a bomb in his office (1970)!

With this augment you can listen Herbert Hoover’s voice during a speech in his infamous 1932 presidential race. Longtime Stanford’s trustee and US President from 1928 to 1932 he will loose because of the Great depression.

So my conclusion is that AR can be a very powerful storytelling tool. Of course the technology isn’t still perfect. GPS has a margin of error of about 10 meters and this can badly impact your augments localization. BUT still it’s a lot of fun and is an experiment worth trying!

With Quadmented, multi-layers journalism or what I call lasagna journalism is finally born. Buon appetito!

Special thanks for granting permission to use the material to:

Stanford Archives

Stanford Historical Society

Stanford News Service

Palo Alto Historical Association

Hoppala Agency (Content management system for AR)

A journalist and entrepreneur, Adriano Farano is currently a Knight fellow at Stanford working on how to combine journalism and augmented reality. A native of Italy, he’s Vice-President, International Development and a director at OWNI, an innovative online outlet covering innovation in all its forms. He is the founding publisher and CEO of Cafebabel.com, the first pan-European media.