Voidopolis by Kat Mustatea
A first-of-its-kind augmented reality book from MIT Press’s Leonardo series at Penguin Random House.
Voidopolis is a digital performance about loss and memory presented as an AR book with a limited lifespan. The story is a loose retelling of Dante’s Inferno, informed by the grim experience of wandering through NYC during a pandemic. Instead of Virgil, the narrator is guided through this modern hellscape by a caustic hobo named Nikita.
Every element of the book is crafted to evoke loss: the stock photographs of NYC with humans wiped away, the lipogrammatic AI generative text that is missing the letter e. The book’s pages are garbled and can only be deciphered through an accompanying AR app—but over a period of months, these digital components decay the way memory might, leaving behind foggy imagery and half-remembered bits of language.
Concept, text, and images: Kat Mustatea
Algorithmic decay and book design: Process Studio (Martin Grödl, Moritz Resl)
AR activations: DOTDOT Studio
Forewords: Charlotte Kent, Arielle Saiber
