"Apping" a City Through Verse

Navigating Colonialism’s Legacy in the Design of a Site-Specific Poetry Project

Abstract

This article discusses the production of a mobile poetry app, conceived by members of the faculty of UBC's Critical Indigenous Studies unit and the current Poet Laureate of the City of Vancouver, and developed by a team of graduate students at UBC's Centre for Digital Media. While exploring and endorsing the underdeveloped cultural potential for digitally-enhanced, site-specific literary experiences and relational technology in general, the article also presents a narrative around a key point of contention that emerged among the app's designers during the creative process. Namely, how the use of standard styles of visual maps and navigational workflows in mobile apps amplify historical injustices deriving from settler colonialism's appropriation and use of land and labour. The narrative then follows the app designers' attempts to envision a novel human-computer wayfinding interface to transcend these problematic geographical norms, and deploy technology in such a way as to possibly restore equity to nonhuman entities like ecosystems, flora and fauna, and the land itself.