Augmentable Goo

Reaching your hand under a public table, you’re likely to feel those familiar globs of chewing gum. Using this hidden ecosystem as a starting point, I began to think about how to activate this space. Augmented reality allows you to encode or display graphic material onto unique patterns. So I created an augmentable goo by mixing black glitter into clay. The dotted patterns in the clay regenerate themselves when you knead the clay. Then I built an iOS app that allows you to encode messages into the goo. Users can stick the goo underneath a table, for others to discover (like a message in a bottle), or on the wall for all to see. You can destroy the message by mixing up the clay again, scrambling the original encoded pattern. Destroying a digital message in an analogue way.