Temporal Tourist Echoes

Inspired by the meticulous record-keeping of 'Public Services' (imagining historical public service announcements, event listings, or infrastructural development records), the narrative of 'Frankenstein' (the idea of piecing together disparate elements to create something new and insightful), and the temporal manipulation of 'Tenet' (the concept of experiencing events out of chronological order or seeing echoes of the past), this project aims to offer a unique tourism technology experience. The core idea is to scrape and analyze publicly available historical data related to specific tourist locations – think old tourist brochures, archived newspaper articles about local festivals, historical travel blogs, even old public transport schedules or building permits that indicate past usage. This data, akin to Frankenstein's disparate parts, will be synthesized and structured to create 'temporal echoes'. These echoes will manifest as augmented reality overlays within a mobile application. When a user visits a historical site, the app, using their phone's camera, will superimpose visual and textual 'ghosts' of past events or activities. For instance, standing in a town square, a user might see an AR overlay showing a bustling market from a century ago, with snippets of historical audio or text describing typical interactions or goods sold. The 'Tenet' inspiration comes in how users might be able to 'rewind' or 'fast-forward' through different historical periods within a specific location, seeing how it evolved. Implementation is envisioned as a niche project: focusing on a single city or even a specific historical district initially. Data scraping can be automated for public domain sources. The AR component can be built using readily available SDKs (like ARCore for Android or ARKit for iOS). The niche aspect lies in its focus on historical authenticity and an immersive, non-intrusive AR experience, moving beyond generic 'points of interest' to detailed historical narratives. Low-cost implementation is achieved by relying on open-source tools and publicly available data. High earning potential comes from a premium subscription model for richer historical content, partnerships with local historical societies or tourism boards for curated 'echoes', and potential for location-based advertising that aligns with historical context (e.g., sponsoring an echo of a historical cafe with an ad for a modern cafe on the same spot).