Belfast unveils Augment the City prototypes

Three immersive tech prototypes that could enhance the visitor experience at Belfast tourism venues have been unveiled by as part of the Augment the City competition.

Led by Belfast City Council and funded by the Belfast Region City Deal, Augment the City supported local SMEs to explore the future role of immersive technologies in visitor experiences.

Exploring emerging technologies

The £575,000 Challenge Fund provided a range of funding, skills development and business support to people working in Belfast’s innovation and creative industries sectors to help build their capacity in using and exploring emerging technologies.

Marking the final stage of the competition, the three successful companies that received £100,000 towards developing their prototypes, unveiled these and shared insights on what they could offer to local tourism and heritage organisations. They are:

• Hamilton Robson’s Belfast Stories Generator (a collaboration with 1Up Studios and the Nerve Centre): an AI-powered interviewer and holographic interface designed to spark natural conversations coupled with a powerful story discovery tool. The prototype is a scalable, searchable archive capturing authentic, unfiltered ‘Belfast Stories’
• ‘Life Stories’ by Liquid City is a free mobile app featuring an AI interviewer, to help people capture and share their memories. The interviewer asks thoughtful, adaptive questions and shapes responses into personal narratives, written in the user’s own words. Stories can be kept private, shared with friends and family, or added to a growing public archive. The platform has already collected hundreds of stories and offers new possibilities for public storytelling, immersive exhibitions and memory collection across the city
• Ekaterina Solomatina’s Memory Fractal – combining mixed reality and 5G technology to create a narrative sculpture, offering a new way of digital storytelling about the city’s vibrant artistic heritage. As well as visitors experiencing the space they are physically in, they will interact with virtual 3D-scanned and community gathered story-sculptures.

The industry event also saw the announcement of the major new Belfast Region City Deal Challenge programme. Full details will be available in the coming months.