Xtended is a project on the extension of geographical space into hybrid environments. In the context of Deleuze’s & Guattari’s term of multiplicity, the analysis was elaborated on the applicability of fields that merge the digital, the real and the narrative milieu. The design process welled from the field of the digital map where the representation of space combines specificity and actuality on a digital plane that is open-ended in terms of intervention. Geographical digital space can host more than one coordinate system, and subscribe further information besides geospatial data. “Information” in a sense that incorporates digital substance with aesthetic perception is the final subject of the project in question. The project formed a dialogue between the digital perspective and the problematics of architectural space to conclude to the concept and pragmatics of the extension, that which extends from an existing entity. A museum extension in the above-described hybrid environment is corresponding to an open-data approach of installing and visiting digital museum exhibitions, rendering the experience open, accessible and transportable across the Xtended coordinate network.

 

In detail, the project of Xtended is based on an encrypted augmented coordinate system (the grid) where virtual passages are founded in order to be decrypted. The process of decryption presupposes the use of the Xtended App (Google Play/Xtended) but most importantly the actual physical presence of the sensor-carrier in the area where the Xtended space is located. Once an augmented coordinate is crossed-traced the application notifies the user and the hyperlinked Xtended space of the museum is accessible and set for navigation. While a typical museum extension is a construction planned adjacent to an existing museum edifice, the project proposes and open-ended approach of both the structural-synthetic elements of the extension itself and the potential assembly with a fore-existing museum institution. The installation of a museum extension in such a way enables also new ways of displaying different exhibition genres (such as screen-based media, digital arts, digitized ‘traditional’ forms of art, etc.) rendering thus the curate process into a fundamental stage design.

 

The main objective of Xtended is to present an intermediate spatial condition where navigation mutates towards a form of narration. Xtended, both in concept and in realization, is a project regarding the problematic of site-specificity (in-situ/ex-situ), the city with its existing infrastructures (virtual/real) and the active engagement of subjects with space.