The Arizona State Museum (ASM) recently led an exciting project that transcends traditional boundaries—curatorial, geographical, and technological. Discovering Community in the Borderlands (DCB) is an innovative endeavor that invites visitors to explore the rich cultural tapestry of Southern Arizona through the lens of augmented reality (AR). The community-dispersed experience takes participants on a guided tour across six cultural histories at ten sites in the Tucson area, developed in partnership with a diverse range of peer institutions. The project was developed and produced with a diverse cohort of learners and called on imagination, research, storytelling, and technological skills to come to fruition. Let’s delve into the specifics of the project and understand how it benefits the museum, its partners, and the broader community.
Funding the Project
The COVID pandemic challenged us to devise ways to obtain funding for projects that supported rather than competed with our local colleagues. With that in mind, I spearheaded various federal grant applications for the project with partners at the University of Arizona (UA) and with input from community partners with whom I’ve built relationships through past projects. None of this special pandemic funding came through, but the process of applying helped to fine-tune a grant we did receive, from the Institute for Museum and Library Services’ Museums for America program, for $190,953. During the second year of our project, I also wrote a proposal to the UA Library’s Digital Borderlands project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for sixty thousand dollars, and one of our partners, the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center obtained a ten-thousand-dollar grant from Arizona Humanities to support our research. Among other purposes, these grants provided funds for the community partners, our university tech developers, a part-time multimedia specialist, technological needs such as server storage, signage printing and fabrication, and publicity. Because we worked with CDH, this funding covered most of the project; if we had worked with commercial vendors, though, it easily could have cost a million dollars because of the complexity of the AR experiences which we bundled together.
A Cohort of Learners
Over three years (2021-2024), a cohort of learners came together to explore how to use augmented reality (AR) to create a community-dispersed exhibit collectively called Discovering Community in the Borderlands. Representatives from Dunbar Pavilion (DP, an African American community center), Mission Garden (MG, an ethnobotanical garden), Borderlands Theater (BT, a Hispanic theater company that uses community oral history stories to create theatrical works), Pascua Yaqui Tribe Department of Language and Culture (PYT), and the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center (TCCC) worked together with the UA’s Arizona State Museum (whose focus is on Indigenous history and culture), Poetry Center (PC), and Center for Digital Humanities (a research and innovation incubator for undergraduate and graduate students pursuing digital technology projects, CDH). We also worked with the UA Library’s Special Collections staff.
At first, like deer in the headlights, we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. Our biweekly meetings were peppered with the essential questions “What is AR?” “What can we do with it?” “How does it work?!” As we eventually learned, augmented reality is different from, though often confused for, virtual reality, which takes over a space and creates a new environment, requiring special glasses (and bigger budgets). Rather than creating a totally different place, augmented reality literally augments what is in the space you see. Instead of special glasses, you look through your phone to see the new augmented reality elements overlaid on the scene in front of you.
Skip over related stories to continue reading articleOnce we thought we sort of understood what AR offered us, we brainstormed themes to guide the creation of our linked exhibit stories. We approached each exhibit as a way for users to discover the diverse communities whose histories and cultural traditions have formed this area of the Southwest borderlands we call home. Looking at our community as a place of abundance, we focused on stories about:
- Resilience/adaptation/belonging
- Reconciliation/reparations/race and identity
- Plants and use in the environment/foodways/healing
- Journey/migrations/immigration
- Cultural expression/celebrations/community gathering
- Entrepreneurship/heritage businesses
These themes reflect the diversity of the many partners sites’ missions, activities, and related community history. They helped direct content brainstorming that each partner did with colleagues and volunteers at its own organization. Each site’s exhibit story does not reflect all the themes, but often includes examples of more than one of them.
Throughout the project, everyone was learning. The UA students charged with designing the app and website that would deliver our stories had to find an appropriate platform and learn to do 3D scanning of museum objects, 3D video filming, holographic recording, and editing of all the above, plus how to render graphics, add voiceovers to images, and stitch together related AR elements into mini exhibit experiences. The curators, theater producers, educators, and community leaders were challenged to bring their storytelling and exhibit knowledge to a very different type of presentation than a static exhibit or public program. They delved into oral histories, archives, and collections to discover elements to include in their stories. They sought out community members, tradition-bearers, and actors to take part in presenting the stories by agreeing to be recorded holographically or via 360 or 2D video. Each community partner worked with ASM and CDH to identify objects, images, oral histories, and poetry and to think like a museum curator in designing how these flowed together to deliver a message. Staff from the UA Poetry Center helped us incorporate poetry into the experiences. They also took the lead in creating related writing prompt postcards for those who use the AR exhibits. These writing activities were presented at all AR experience launch programs and are available on the DCB website.
It took most of the first year to figure out the technology, draft exhibit stories, and identify content, and in many cases invite people to serve as the voices and faces in the experiences. We spent the next two years refining which digital platform to use to present the AR; locating exact sites for the AR; researching images, objects, poetry, and participants; digitizing content; recording holograms; designing the website; designing signage; and building and installing it. We also did a lot of adjusting as we tested the AR experiences with community members.
We demanded a lot of the student developers and multimedia specialist. We wanted a seamless experience where users can scan one QR code for multiple AR activities. Ultimately, after trying various platforms, they homed in on Blippar. Blippar allowed us to present diverse AR approaches within one space—holograms, digital photo walls, 360 and 2D videos, 3D objects—and to add “buttons” to press, text for identification, and captions. Users access all of this simply by scanning one QR code located on a sign.
Even once the stories and tangible objects were woven together into a digital story, we still felt AR was baffling. We were still asking, “But how does it work?” “Why can’t I see it on my phone?” “Where did the hologram go?” When it finally worked for each of us, it felt like magic. Then we discovered we needed to caption the experiences, not only for accessibility, but also for practicability: sometimes it is noisy outside and hard to hear elements. That created a new challenge for our app developers and multimedia specialist.
Sharing the AR Exhibits
The problem with AR is that you can’t see it! There is nothing there except a sign with a QR code on it. We knew our signage needed to be enticing, but we discovered we also had to tell people to scan the QR code to begin! Even then, it works better with a nudge and helper: people are more apt to use the experiences if someone is there directing them to scan the code and wait for it to load. How were we going to get people to find our AR exhibit sites and try the experiences? As part of our advertising campaign, we created a teaser to introduce people to the entire Discovering Community in the Borderlands linked exhibits.
In this teaser, you are greeted by Marc Pinate, Director of Borderlands Theater, as a hologram who tells you about the AR exhibits and shows you examples of 3D objects and 2D photographs, and a map of where the sites are while encouraging you to go to the DCB website to get directions and learn more. We used this mini AR experience on postcards that were distributed by each partner and placed at libraries, as well as on Tucson’s trolly car plaques, and on advertisements in local newspapers.
Project Results and Benefits
We did several launch events where we were on-hand to help users. At these we also encouraged people to do the writing prompt activities and to fill out evaluation forms. User comments included:
- “I loved the movement between the historical object, that then turns into an engaging animation to bring the aesthetics into lived space, that then intertwine with the dancers! Wow—what a wonderful demonstration of objects connecting to lived experience on tradition.” [referring to ASM’s AR experience]
- “It gives access to so many more people and places.”
- “It’s a quick, fun way to learn about our communities/community.”
- “I’m a Tucson archivist and have always wanted more ways to share Tucson history with non-historians. This is an engaging way to teach and share this story.”
- “There is so much hidden history in Tucson. This is the perfect strategy to introduce people to important history.”
The geographically dispersed Discovering Community in the Borderlands exhibit is not a passive experience. It invites dialogue, curiosity, and collaboration. Families, students, and tourists engage with the project, sparking conversations about identity, belonging, cultural resilience, and links among the diverse community histories and traditions that make up Tucson.
This project is an example of how museums can share resources, find funding, and help guide projects that give curatorial authority to community partners. It models shared learning of new techniques for telling stories, and is a unique way to further acceptance of community curation and use of new technologies for museum interpretation. DCB resulted in a website, writing activities, public programs, and a dispersed exhibit of ten different AR experience mini exhibits that share the history, culture, built and natural environment, struggles, joys, and lives of some of the diverse communities that make up the greater Tucson area. The DCB project also strengthened relations between all the project partners and has inspired new projects among them.
The AR Experiences
You can take a physical tour of Tucson as you visit the various AR sites, or go beyond physical boundaries and access them from the website. The project’s website has an interactive map connecting the different sites, as well as background information on each partner, photographs, writing activities, and the QR codes for the AR. Discover community in the Borderlands through these AR exhibit experiences:
Arizona State Museum
By ASM’s front entrance, encounter Amy Juan, a Tohono O’odham community organizer, in hologram form, and listen as she welcomes you to the O’odham himdag (land) where ASM is located and invites you to enjoy the Wak: Tab Basket Dancers. See a pot with Indigenous dancers painted on it swirl around as the dancers glide off and morph into a 360 video of actual Tohono O’odham basket dancers. Hear the gourd rattles keeping the beat and O’odham songs being sung while the group’s director explains the meaning of this traditional dance. In a 2D video, meet O’odham basketweaver Terrol Johnson and see favorite pieces of his in the museum’s vault, and then explore some of these baskets in 3D and a digital photo wall of Johnson’s baskets while he talks about his art practice. Hear O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda read her poem about basketry in O’odham and English and see it scroll across the space.
Borderlands Theater
BT placed its AR exhibit at a park and launched it as part of its theatrical production of Westside Stories. Following a series of QR codes along a pathway, engage with either an actor as hologram sharing stories of the Hispanic and Chinese community whose barrio this was or with historic photographs of the area with voiceovers about related community experiences. You can also watch two animated videos telling the story of the “Gardens of Gethsemane,“ a large sculpture installed at the park. All the experiences in this AR exhibit are offered bilingually in Spanish and English.
Chinese History Downtown
This site is located on a walkway above what was a bustling multicultural community until urban renewal developers in the 1960s tore it down to build the Tucson Convention Center. The AR makes this hidden history visible once again. Watch a 2D video and hear Tina Liao recount the history of this bustling community and learn how cultural objects and documents reflecting that life have been preserved. See historic photographs, letters, and identification cards of members of the Chinese community of that time, and manipulate 3D cultural objects recovered during archaeology of the site. Discover how families maintained connections between their lives in Tucson and China.
Dunbar Pavilion
DP’s AR exhibit is accessible by scanning a QR code posted on the fence surrounding the 1917 Dunbar School (now a community center). Meet a Dunbar board member in hologram form and listen to him read the 1987 Mayoral Proclamation about the desegregation of the Dunbar School. Gaze at a gallery of historic photographs depicting joyous gatherings of Tucson’s twentieth-century African American community, documenting both celebration and resilience. Join the Tucson Slide Societies’ dance class and try a few steps in sync with the dancers.
Mission Garden
At the garden entrance, a hologram of gardener and community liaison Meagan Lopez introduces you to the history of farming in the Tucson area, which spans thousands of years. You can see historic photographs and hear a poem in five languages about the garden while taking a 360 tour of the grounds. Meet Ruben Cu:k Ba’ak and listen to his poem about O’odham foods, colonization, and the power of his culture for health.
Pascua Yaqui Tribe
Visitors to the Tribal Administration Building will find the AR sign near the entrance. Holographic Yaqui tribal members from Mexico and various Yaqui communities in Arizona share poetry, a rap song, and stories about love of their culture and their hopes for a resilient Yaqui community. Historic photographs and a map showing these communities can also be seen.
Tucson Chinese Cultural Center
Engage with the various activities of the TCCC’s Tucson Chinese School through 360 videos. Enjoy a traditional guzheng concert, read a poem about the instrument, and virtually touch the stringed instrument. Sit in on a Chinese language class. Be awed by the skill of young yo-yo students performing tricks while hearing about the history of the Chinese yo-yo.
Tucson Chinese Markets
In the tiny town of Tucson in the 1880s, a few Chinese settlers were selling provisions. By the turn of the twentieth century, the number had grown to forty stores, offering groceries including fresh produce from Chinese-owned farms on the banks of Tucson’s Santa Cruz river. They catered to the Mexican, Black, and Indigenous residents of the neighborhoods where the Chinese settled. The total number of Chinese stores peaked in the 1950s at over 100 and then began to decline in the 1960s. Although few are left, the evidence of them is apparent throughout the city. Visit three Chinese Market sites to see historic photographs and watch video reminiscences about these markets. The three highlighted were home to the historic Lim You Market, established in the 1920s/1930s and now housing Screwbean Brewery; New Empire Market, established originally as Joe Tang’s Market in the 1930s and still in business and Chinese-owned today; and the former Alan’s Market.
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