Go Queer is a ludic, locative media experience that occurs on location, in the city, on the playful border between game and story, the present and the past, the queer and the straight, the normative and the slant. A variation on the scavenger hunt mechanic, the app invites its users to drift queerly through the city, discovering the hidden histories that always surround us, yet somehow remain just beyond our apprehension. It displays text, images, video and audio in place at the actual locations where they occurred, creating what Richardson and Hjorth (2014, 256) call “the hybrid experience of place and presence.”By bringing together the physical navigation of the contemporary city with the imaginative navigation of its queer past, the app enacts a praxis that I characterize as a queer ludic traversal, one that renders the navigation itself as queer as the content that it presents.
While the original app is meant to be experienced in Edmonton, Alberta, I’ve created this very beta, scaled-down version for Hastac-ers to enjoy here. Although the “locations” you discover here are really located in Edmonton, my hope is that this version can give you a sense of how the app functions, in all its glitchy, not-ready-for-primetime glory.
Need a hint?
iOS is, as always, more challenging. We have a version available in TestFlight for the Apple oriented, but we’ve done no testing of it, so be forewarned. You need to install the TestFlight app first. Then, give us your name and Apple ID email address (required by Apple), and we’ll send you an invite.
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I’d love your feedback on any aspect of the app, either here or in TestFlight.
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