Nickelodeons in East Liberty is an augmented reality experience couched in designer Larry Shea's larger Ghosts in the Machine augmented reality project.

Ghosts in the Machine is a project exploring how mediated reality and location based interactivity can enhance and extend live performance through the incorporation and overlay of digital media and information. The project brings together media artists, performers, directors, designers, technologists, historians, and other scholars to explore how technologies can be meaningfully incorporated into stories that engage audiences and deepen their sense of place in an increasingly homogeneous public environment.

Nickelodeons in East Liberty is a site-specific AR experience that reveals the cultural and architectural history of the nickelodeon in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood. The experience is specific to the former location of the Bijou Dream nickelodeon where it manifests the building's once-upon-a-time facade and early motion picture films which played there. The project explores the cultural power of the nickel which the establishment of the nickelodeon elevated to a cross-class key to shared public entertainment in the early 1900s.

Nickelodeons in East Liberty Experience design by Adam J. Thompson
Programming and coding collaboration with Sylvie Sherman
Ghosts in the Machine conception and direction by Larry Shea

May 2017