The Project: Mapping
MISSING BLACK TECHNOFOSSILS HERE

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Afrofuturism's concept and practice entail a collapse of time where past, present, and future are connected and interwoven. Afrofuturism and augmented reality highlight the potential and the power of the imagination as a catalyst for change and transformation of a person's reality and experience. Simultaneously, augmented reality like Afrofuturism, allows for a speculative narrative experience through a platform where time and space are altered. The art of this project uses the technology of augmented reality to show these alternative ideas.
 

The augmented reality piece is an artistic digital monument that serves as a multi-faceted and layered metaphor entitled; Ancestral Technofossil. The virtual monument is a cyborg bust wearing a hybrid twin-faced ceremonial masquerade mask. The masks are inspired by the Baule of Ivory Coast and an enhanced modernized Karma ewe mask of West Africa's region of Ghana, Togo, and Benin. This hybrid figure represents the forged Pan-African identity of African descent people in the Black diaspora who were displaced due to colonization and the trans-Atlantic and Arab slave trade. Lastly, to move away from representing a singular person or perspective, it instead focuses on the value of honouring the elders' common practice tradition. This digital monument of the African ancestor of the future and past is a tribute to the stories that society may not remember or does not know – it serves as a marker that there is a plethora of missing memories monumentalized.