December 16, 2020 by Gary Singh
HISTORY FOUND: The northeast corner of Fourth and Jackson streets looked different in 1931, when filipino workers gathered at Leo Escalante s Manila Pool Hall.
Photo Courtesy of Hidden Histories of Japantown
Japantown is the perfect San Jose neighborhood for artists to fuse the natural with the digital, especially now, as one of the city s most intriguing historic locales faces all the classic threats of gentrification, real estate greed and political indifference.
A new project, Hidden Histories of Japantown, makes that fusion by implementing augmented reality (AR) technology to dig down deep and tell stories long buried beneath the surface. AR works by installing an app on a smartphone, which then overlays computer-generated sounds, images and text on the camera s view of the real world, producing an alternate, augmented experience.