Ethical Considerations for AR Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites Joshua A. Fisher Georgia Institute of Technology Jay David Bolter Georgia Institute of Technology ABSTRACT There are a number of Augmented Reality (AR) experiences that are situated or related to sites of pain, suffering, and death. The ethical design, development, and facilitation of these experiences has not been addressed by the current AR scholarship. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper presents foundational principles for how AR can be ethically designed to facilitate a respectful experience. A niche form of tourism studies, dark tourism is used as a universal term for any form of tourism that is related to death, suffering, atrocity, tragedy or crime. Based on this research, the paper proposes some suggestions for creating ethical AR experiences at dark tourism sites before, during, and after a visit. AR can become an ethical and powerful extension of reflecting upon mortality if spectacle is moderated at these dark sites. The paper concludes with design suggestions for ethical AR experiences at dark tourism sites already engaged in the commodification and consumption of the macabre. Keywords: Tourism, ethical design, augmented reality. Index Terms: [Social Implications of Technology]: Ethics— Technology Social Factors; [The Computing Profession]: Miscellaneous—Ethics 1 INTRODUCTION Tourism is the active consumption of spectacle: the spectacle of foreign lands, other cultures and ways of living. The enormous industry of commercial tourism inevitably packages spectacle in a way that makes it accessible for tourists. In many, perhaps most tourist sites, such as the CN Tower in Toronto or the Red Wood Forests of California, the spectacle is relatively benign. There are other tourist destinations related to death, suffering, atrocity, tragedy or crime. In tourism studies, these places are referred to as dark tourism sites. Sites of dark tourism include New Orleans after Katrina and the Auschwitz concentration camp, but also Brazil’s Favelas and Russia’s Chernobyl. The tourism industry has long grappled with the multifaceted and problematic nature of conducting tours at such locations. In the last ten years, a number of augmented reality (AR) tourist experiences have been designed for such dark sites, and here the ethical considerations are of great importance. Yet the ethical impact, design, and development of such dark AR experiences have not received critical attention. A dark site often confronts visitors with their own mortality in an amoral world. It can be a challenging experience, both emotionally and intellectually. We propose that these kinds of morally-fraught sites require AR experiences that moderate their spectacle in order for their engagement to be ethical. AR’s capacity to conceal certain information by foregrounding the digital means that how it is designed to facilitate an experience has ethical consequences. This paper espouses an ethical design practice that does not elevate spectacle for the conspicuous consumption of conflict and pain at these locations. Instead, the paper seeks to establish ethical design criteria that avoids the trivialization and kitschification of these dark sites. There have only been two other papers that have directly addressed the simulation of these dark heritage sites. One was about a virtual tour of the Auschwitz concentration camp through which people could move by scrolling [1]. The other utilizes Deleuze and Guattari’s work on aesthetics to discuss how a visitor to a dark site, whether via a media platform or in person, might be positively affected by its construction or commemoration [2]. There is another set of studies about AR experiences at sites such as cemeteries, concentration camps, and dark heritage sites [3, 4, 5]. However, these papers rarely directly engage with the ethical representation of death or tragedy associated with the site. This paper opens up a new discussion by explicitly evaluating the ethical ramifications of contemporary AR experiences related to dark sites. 2 OVERVIEW OF DARK TOURISM The study of dark tourism is a field in its infancy. Nearly two decades of research have sketched a hazy and at times conflicted map. Along the way, more specific terms have been suggested, such as thanatourism, dark and dystopian tourism, poverty tourism, disaster tourism, and so on. Even the use of the term “dark” has been recognized as problematic for a number of reasons [6]. The term itself conjures thoughts of a macabre spectacle. For the purposes of this paper, dark tourism refers to sites associated with, “death, suffering, atrocity, tragedy or crime.” [7]. Recently, Duncan Light has compiled an exhaustive study of themes and research surrounding dark tourism from 1996 to 2016. Light concludes that there is one feature that differentiates dark tourism from mainstream heritage trips. What makes these dark sites quintessentially different is that they mediate our mortality [7] [8]. They allow visitors the ability to confront and understand death, pain, and suffering in ways that other sites do not. In a world in which death is both valorized in Hollywood and the gaming industry, but hidden from society through the medical apparatus, dark tourism sites become a heterotopia to confront one’s own mortality through the deaths of others [9]. What a visitor brings to the site: their own conception of death, their anxiety over the death act, their sublimated socio-cultural perception of death as a medical or spiritual institution, and their personal narrative become mediated at the site. The design of an AR experience needs to address these aspects. The site itself, the affective impact of the place’s aura [4] [10] [7], connected in this case to the suffering of a particular community or people, is shaped by the visitor’s relation to the site and tragedy. This is a complex and emotional space for a designer to enter. Consider concentration camp tours in which oppressors, witnesses, and survivors may move about the same space—their personal histories and relations to the dark site starkly different but bound to one another. Planning an AR spectacle that enables each group to ethically reflect upon mortality is challenging. Market segmentation and the construction of a “heritage force field” are unsatisfying answers [11]. Instead, a broader approach that appreciates the uniqueness of each site and its aura may provide a basis for an ethical response. * jfisher46@gatech.edu; jb121@gatech.edu Please cite original