Sherwood Rise is an Augmented transmedia Book, a research collaboration between Dave Miller and Dave Moorhead, under the leadership of Professor Alexis Weedon, University of Bedfordshire, UK. The project is part of the UNESCO 'Crossing Media Boundaries: Adaptations and New Media Forms of the Book', which networks 6 institutions internationally. The first version of the project is now live. Please begin here: http://itsthetruth.org Sherwood Rise is an Augmented Reality transmedia story experience, told through a range of media and formats - printed newspapers, smartphones, emails, hacker websites, blogs, sound, music, graphic novels and augmented reality. This is a durational fiction, told over 4 days. Inspired by the current financial crisis, and the Occupy movement, the story is based on the traditional tale of Robin Hood. The traditional tale of peasant revolt and dissent is brought up to date, and been adapted for augmented reality and transmedia. In this adaptation, austerity is imposed on the poor by a privileged elite, while a gang of hacker outlaw terrorists called the ‘Merry Men’ fight back. The project explores the future of the book and transmedia storytelling: - It's a story told in a range of media on multiple platforms - It expands a traditional printed story, adds additional layers of story through augmented reality - It adds augmented digital artefacts onto a printed story - It's a study of the processes of adaptation in creating augmented books. The objectives of the project are: (1) To add virtual elements to the real world page by combining mobile device/ new media technology and the book (2) To use mobile device based augmented reality and Transmedia, in novel and innovative ways to expand a narrative (3) In creative and artistic ways to raise awareness and stimulate thought about financial fraud, corruption, austerity (4) To adapt a story that works across many cultures, particularly UK, India, China (the Robin Hood tale is common to many cultures) (5) To produce a book which is part static and part dynamic, and altered by the reader's behaviour. (6) To challenge power relations of news using augmented reality My research interests for this project include: - Augmented reality activism, challenging authority, privilege and power - The politics of augmented reality and storytelling/ news, contested content. - Aesthetic, artistic, cultural and sociopolitical uses of AR and Transmedia stories - Revealing hidden stories within a fiction - Many voices in a story - simultaneous multiple viewpoints - The experience of designing, adapting and building a Transmedia book experience from the ground up - The reader experience - reading an augmented reality book, moving from paper to screen, the disjointed reading experience - The aesthetics of augmented reality on mobile devices For further information, please visit the project blog: http://augmentedwonder.blogspot.co.uk

2. Sherwood Rise
Augmented Reality book
• International UNESCO project
„Crossing Media Boundaries:
Adaptations and New Media Forms
of the Book‟
• "Sherwood Rise” - is an Augmented
Reality (AR) transmedia story
"experience" involving smart phones
and traditional printed physical books
• Study of the processes of adaptation
in creating augmented books.

3. Sherwood Rise
Augmented Reality – a definition
• "AR allows the user to see the real
world, with virtual objects
superimposed upon or composited
with the real world. Therefore, AR
supplements reality, rather than
completely replacing it. Ideally, it
would appear to the user that the
virtual and real objects coexisted in
the same space.”
(Ronald Azuma, A Survey of Augmented
Reality, 1997)

4. Sherwood Rise
Augmented Reality - coming soon
• Google Glasses likely here by 2014
• Users to be always connected to the
internet through a headset
• Superimposes digital data on what
wearers look at
• The information can correspond with
the view, e.g. giving directions or
information about tourist sites.

5. Sherwood Rise
Augmented Reality and Politics
The Politics of AR and place:
Augmented reality in urban places: contested content and the
duplicity of code - Mark Graham, Matthew Zook and Andrew
Boulton, 2012:
“Given the important role that digital discourses (in the form of
geographically referenced content) play in co-constituting place, we call for
redoubled attention to both the layerings of content and the duplicity and
ephemerality of code in shaping the uneven and power-laden practices of
representation and experience of augmented urban places.”

6. Sherwood Rise
Augmented Reality and Politics
Artists using AR to contest power
structures involving space:
Tamiko Thiel & the artist group "ManifestAR" -
political AR Provocations:
"With AR we install, revise, permeate, simulate,
expose, decorate, crack, infest and unmask
Public Institutions, Identities and Objects
previously held by Elite Purveyors of Public and
Artistic Policy in the so-called Physical Real."
(http://manifestarblog.wordpress.com)

7. Sherwood Rise
Augmented Reality and Politics
The Augmented Book:
Concerned with the politics of
Augmented Reality and stories.

8. Sherwood Rise
Augmented Reality and Politics
• The Augmented Book uses
AR to contest the news told in
a newspaper
• The AR tells the news from
other perspectives, what is
the truth?
• Different version of news is
told in the augmented content

9. Sherwood Rise
This project is about new forms
of storytelling ...
• Cross-media, Transmedia, stories
across multiple platforms
• Expanding a traditional printed
story, new forms of the book,
possible futures of the book
• Telling stories using a
Smartphone (e.g. iPhone or
Android)

10. Sherwood Rise
Narrative Challenges
• Use AR to expand a printed story
• AR is digital "artefacts" - text, graphics,
animations, video, sound, live data,
connected to databases
• AR is digital, it can be dynamic,
whereas a physical real book is static.
• How to handle the static versus
dynamic aspects?
• How can a printed story change
through interaction with AR?
• We decided a newspaper format is
one way to solve this problem, instead
of a traditional book or novel format.

11. Sherwood Rise
The Story
• Financial crisis
• Robin Hood
• Relevant to the current situation
• Robin Hood story - a good guy, hero
or villain - even gangster?
• Many possible perspectives
• AR telling other perspectives.

12. Sherwood Rise
Adaptation - Dave Moorhead
• Dave Moorhead - short story,
adapted from the original (English)
Robin Hood
• The traditional folk story of peasant
revolt and dissent brought up to date
• In this adaptation, austerity is
imposed on the poor by a privileged
elite, while a gang of hackers called
the „Merry Men‟ fight back.

13. Sherwood Rise
Adaptation for AR & Transmedia
• Range of media
• Newspaper - over four days
• Subscribe to the newspaper
• Arrives as a PDF via email, each
morning
• Your actions update a database
• This dictates which version of the
newspaper you receive
• Dave had to adapt his story to
work in multiple format/ platforms.

14. Sherwood Rise
The Transmedia structure

15. Sherwood Rise
Screenshots - 2D Images mapped onto 3D planes

16. Sherwood Rise
Screenshots - 2D Images mapped onto 3D planes

17. Sherwood Rise
Screenshots - 2D Images mapped onto 3D planes

18. Sherwood Rise
Screenshots – 2D Images mapped onto 3D planes

19. Sherwood Rise
Screenshots – animated sequences

20. Sherwood Rise
• Dave Miller, RIMAD Post Doctoral Research Fellow at UoB
• david.miller@beds.ac.uk
• Dave Moorhead, PhD student and screenwriter, UoB
• screenmoorhead@googlemail.co.uk
The project blog:
http://augmentedwonder.blogspot.co.uk
Twitter: @augmentedbook