A total of 40 different prints were created - including the front and back - as well as 20 individual texts within the shirts. The structure of the shirts is always the same and thus brings the shirts together in terms of design. The shirts are divided into two categories: passive – analog and proactive – digital.
The proactive shirts can be scanned with a smartphone using augmented reality. The digital interactions vary depending on the topic - sometimes they encourage critical questioning, sometimes they provoke with activist practices.
To provide an overview of all the shirts, including their titles and, in the case of the digital shirts, their interactions, they are all listed below.
The applications were created in Unity using C# scripts and the AR Foundation, more specifically the Apple-specific AR Kit.
The target device is a smartphone, in this case an iPhone X, because digital activism is also primarily active in social media, which is strongly geared towards smartphone use. Access to the interactions should be as seamless as possible, which is why the user interface was designed to be as minimal as possible. In contrast to the monochrome shirts, the digital extensions are designed with strong colors, as in the typical visual language of activism.
Especially the exhibition and the resonance to the project showed me the importance of connecting technology with socially relevant issues. I’m convinced, that there are so many potentials, which design and technology can have on democratic processes that aren’t completely explored yet.
Besides the final conversations I had about the project, I enjoyed the creation of analogue and digital elements coming together. One of the hardest challenges was definetly to provide a stable augmentation when the shirts were moving for example. But also the screenprinting without a dark room was quite a challenge.