Supermarkets are places in which communication is really authoritary.

supermarket

Everything you see, hear, touch and smell is decided my store managers, according to commercial and marketing strategies.

The things you read on product labels are decided from manufacturers and corporations, and you have no control over it.

Even the spatial layout of the supermarket itself is the result of a strategic decision.

Squatting Supermarkets wishes to confront this scenario by using Augmented Reality to bring radical, participatory communication back into supermarkets.

Using the Squatting Supermarkets smartphone application it is possible to scan the labels and packaging of products and

  • add information to it (text, sounds, images, videos)
  • see information that has been added by other users
  • browse information related to the product or to its manufacturer, as aggregated from a series of institutional, research, activist sources
Product communication, thus, becomes open source and peer to peer, and products become social networks which become accessible in the most delicate moment of the process of consumption: the instant in which you decide to buy the product or not.

We will present Squattng Supermarkets at UAMO festival in Munich from the 27th to the 30th of October. The presentation will take the form of a performative action and we hope to be able to organize a live workshop in some supermarkets around the city.

Join us at UAMO!