Mapping Austrofascism in situ: a design exploration of augmented storytelling for contested historical events and sites

Abstract

The digital-cartography platform Mapping Austrofascism mediates the Austrofascist “Turks Deliverance Celebration” (Türkenbefreiungsfeier) of May 14, 1933, in Vienna through three mapping interfaces: bird’s-eye perspective, panorama, and street view. This paper explores how the platform’s multi-perspective, on-screen mediation can be translated into situated, in-place storytelling of contested historical events and sites, while considering the risks and benefits of doing so. Applying research-through-design methods, we use the digital platform as a fixed reference point to develop augmented-reality probes that extend its mapping interfaces from the screen to the physical ground. These probes are organized as an urban media archaeology of the interwar period in the form of three site-specific design experiments, each focusing on a historically significant medium: the public-address system and radio broadcast of the Austrofascist rally in the Schönbrunn Palace gardens; a sound-film newsreel that manipulates coverage of a National Socialist counter-event at the so-called Engelmann Arena in Vienna; and information visualization along the lines of Otto Neurath’s ISOTYPE at Karl Marx Hof, a symbol of Red Vienna, where a Social Democratic “Freedom Celebration” was taking place at the same time. We deliberately frame the results as a design exploration rather than a design space, i.e., not as a validated, generalizable map of dimensions and cells, but rather as a partial, situated trajectory of probes, declaring the positions each experiment occupies, the combinations we abstain from building out of a sense of historical responsibility, and the questions our attempts leave open. All three design probes are operationalized through geospatially anchored Unity prototypes that have not yet been deployed on site or evaluated with visitors; anticipated effects on visitor experience are therefore presented as design propositions rather than empirical findings.