Coming Soon! Explorations in Urban Renewal from the Physical to the Virtual by Stephanie Rothenberg, part of “Art Environment Action!” exhibition :: Opening: September 27, 2012; 6:00 – 9:00 pm :: Kellen Gallery, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center’s (SJDC), 66 Fifth Avenue (at 13th Street), New York.

Coming Soon! is a mixed-reality urban walking tour enabled through smart phones and iPads that explores the visible and invisible traces of urban renewal in the West Farms neighborhood of the Bronx. The focus of the tour is a recently rezoned area, one of the largest in the borough, slated for redevelopment into a $350 million mixed-use planned community encompassing over 5-acres of land.

Using the camera viewfinder of a mobile device, one discovers a series of animated, virtual billboards linking to both personal stories and factual data that pose questions around what remains seen and what gets left behind in the effort to revitalize. Through interviews with a broad range of the community including developers, community board members, local business owners, urban gardeners and youth, the project creates a local narrative on current and future development.

A 2-day workshop (November 30, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm and December 1, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm) at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center’s (SJDC) Kellen Gallery that will be comprised of location-based research trip to West Farms, Bronx, and tutorial session on creating augmented reality content.