MEDIA RELEASE

9 March 2018

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Victoria launches augmented reality Literary Atlas

Victoria University of Wellington’s latest foray into interactive digital design has launched at the 2018 Writers & Readers Festival.

LitAtlas, a literary atlas of Wellington, is a smartphone-enabled app that takes you on a stroll around Wellington’s waterfront in the virtual company of some of the country’s favourite writers.

LitAtlas combines geo-location tracking, kinetic typography and augmented reality. “It lifts poetry off the page, animates it in the landscape, and allows users to generate their own poems that can be tweeted out to the world,” says Project Director, Dr Sydney Shep from Victoria’s Wai-te-ata Press.

“As a form of location-based or ambient literature, LitAtlas not only foregrounds the act of interpretation but provides opportunities for co-creation,” she says.

Victoria’s Media Design Programme Director Dr Walter Langelaar, IT Specialist Matt Plummer, Dr Shep and a team of five students from the School of Design and School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies have collaborated on the app to connect landscape with technology and demonstrate how new media can reinvent digital space.

The free downloadable app is available at litatlas.nz

For more information contact Dr Sydney Shep on 04-4635784 or wtapress@vuw.ac.nz.

Issued by Victoria University of Wellington Communications & Marketing. Contact Communications Adviser Alix Chapman on 04-4636908 or alix.chapman@vuw.ac.nz.

Victoria University of Wellington: Capital thinking. Globally minded.