The Leimert Phone Co. uses the past to imagine the future. Rooted in Ben Caldwell’s KAOS Network, I worked with USC’s World Building Institute, alongside community members, high schoolers, and college students to imagine futures for the Leimert Park community in Los Angeles with autonomous cars and augmented reality paying respect to the community’s collective memory.  New media was viewed as a tool for social change as students imagined and built functional prototypes for augmented reality applications and interfaces in rapid prototyping workshops.

Using a mixture of low-cost and cutting edge technology, students and community members used Afrofuturism, world building, and civic imagination to imagine how the community's distinctive spirit might manifest through emerging technology.  Prototypes were embedded in a future world that was carefully captured in Karl Baumann’s film Sankofa City and built out by Retro Poblano’s autonomous vehicles.