Augmented Reality Tales of War and Peace (ARTWP)

This initiative was supported by The New Democracy Fund through the New Cooperation Mechanism.

About the project

Augmented Reality Tales of War and Peace (ARTWP) is an augmented reality (AR), multi-arts, co-creation project between partners from Denmark, Ukraine, Italy, and France. The partners represent smaller cities, all of them at a distance from their capitals.

The project is formed around the urgency of the present war in Ukraine, and will reflect upon, not only this specific war, but the very concept of war – and the shared ambition for peace.

The project theme: “Words of War, Words of Peace.” is conceived as a digital art development project, in which stories are gathered from those who are (or have been) in the midst of war, as well as those seeing war from the “outside”.

During workshops in each partner’s home city the gathered stories will be developed as Augmented Reality Tales (ART), with 12 experienced artists, 12 young volunteer artists and up to 600 local citizens working together using AR, text, music, animation, visual art, video and sound.

The ARTWP augmented reality artworks created during these sessions will then be made available at the end of the project in large squares or public spaces in the four cities. The public will be invited to use their smartphones or tablets to discover – with the help of our geolocation augmented reality app. “meadow” * – in these artworks both the abomination of war, and the world’s urgent need for peace.

The war, as we all know, is not over yet, but we still have our weapons – our words and our art – in our hands, in our hearts and in our souls. It has never been more important than today to meet around our common humanity. And it is precisely in such situations that art can play not just an important but, hopefully, a pivotal role.

*The AR app. “meadow” is created by Untold Garden – an art and design studio based in Malmø and London, exploring how technology can catalyse interpersonal relationships and enable alternative human experiences. By creating participatory systems, they urge the audience to question who controls our online presence and speculate on how we might interact in the future.

The project is co-funded by EU Creative Europe & Statens Kunstfond.

Learn more about the ARTWP project here.

About the organisations

WorldWideWords is an international multi-arts platform for artistic activities with clear social and cultural perspectives. WoWiWo has, as an organisation, 13 years of experience creating and managing both large and small-scale local and trans-national artistic cooperation projects in Denmark. WoWiWo is based in the Roskilde Municipality Citizens Democracy House (Byens Hus). Byens Hus also houses the “Ten Birds on the Roof” artists collective, of which WoWiWo is a founding member. Artistic director, Peter Campbell Bensted, has almost fifty years experience in both major and minor socio-arts projects and will lead both the project and the Danish team.

Lviv Municipal Library has art and culture, and in particular literature, firmly on its agenda. The Library has cooperated closely with the Lviv International Literature Festival (Eastern Europe’s largest literature festival) over many years, hosting numerous events and offering especially young people the chance to meet a wide range of international writers and poets. The Library is particularly interested in the digital aspects of the ARTWP project which will allow citizens, especially the young, to follow the interface between digital and more traditional artistic forms. Nelly Klos (Project Leader) and Vasyl Kmet (Director, Lviv Municipal Library), will lead the Ukrainian team.

Les Fous de Bassan is a professional theatre company based in Beaugency, France. Les fous de bassan! like to awaken and provoke, question and delight, pass on and share theatre. Their work is focused in two directions: contemporary theatrical creations and cultural actions with different audiences, especially in rural areas. Both its creations and its cultural actions give pride of place to words that reveal the present time and its aspirations, while opening up to other artistic disciplines.

Associazione Oltrezona has been responsible for many innovative arts activities in the Calabria region. The “Incontri Possibili” (Possible Encounters, Possible Meetings) Festival, initiated by their highly experienced artistic director Renato Costabile, who has spent many years working with artistic endeavours based on encounters between artists with different cultural and artistic backgrounds, is a good example. Artistic director for Associazione Oltrezona Renato Costabile will lead the Italian team.

Project details