Tian Qin | Wanderlust: Take you to go for a wander with AR

 
Wanderlust is an AR project that leads people to wander and enjoy a pure walking without any practical purpose. Instead of finding the fastest or shortest route like other navigation apps, wanderlust would generate a random route for the users every time and leads them to explore the area around them through AR. Walking, especially wandering is a practice that can promote thinking, instigate creativity and new ideas, or help people to relax from the fast-paced life. However, it’s becoming harder to wander and perceive the environment in this era because of the obsession with efficiency and people’s reliance on digital maps, navigation systems, GPS, and other location-based technologies. This project, hence, aims to get people to start wandering again and pay more attention to walking as a non-functional pure practice and the physical environment.

After opening Wanderlust, the user would see a welcome AR sign and some arrows leading the user. During the walk, the user would see AR signs showing “turn left” or “turn right” and signs about some interesting and noteworthy places around the user. Very little information is presented in this application to reduce the information layer that may block users’ perception of the physical environment and all information is shown with AR.

Since when I was developing this project, Shanghai was under lockdown, I got the inspiration to also develop this project in a more artistic direction. People can virtually walk in Wanderlust by finger-walking on the screen. I want to use this project to show the tension between people wanting to go outside in this beautiful spring and the strict lockdown. It serves as a reflection on the current lockdown situation in Shanghai and all those prevailing ideas about the metaverse and virtual world.