Other Earth Brings a City-Wide AR Art Experience to Seattle
Future Arts Way: Other Earth 2026 will turn the city centre into a large-scale public art experience built around augmented reality, mixed reality and community storytelling. The project is set to launch in June 2026 and will remain open through September, with the route available 24 hours a day and designed for visitors of all ages.
The trail stretches from the Pacific Science Centre to King Street Station and includes more than 35 augmented reality stops. Future Arts says the experience is intended to connect residents and visitors with Seattle through a no-download wayfinder that combines Coast Salish knowledge, Afrofuturistic perspectives, ecological storytelling, and mixed-reality art. The project brings together digital works and physical locations across the city centre.
The main route is called Arches to Clock Tower. It links digital artworks, stories and interactive ground markers into a single walking experience. Each stop focuses on themes including flora, fauna, water, ecology and ancestral memory. The route is also designed to connect the public with small businesses, emerging arts spaces and historical sites along the way.
One of the central stops is Sound/s Flower Dance, an augmented reality work by Jose Gabriel Contreras. It places flowering plants over Sound/s, the large-scale relief sculpture by Ivan Toth Depeña on the façade of the Benaroya Symphony Parking Garage. The vertical sculptural forms in the work are derived from Reena Esmail’s composition RE|Member, which has been translated visually into frequencies, amplitudes and rhythmic qualities as a physical interpretation of musical structure. RE|Member is the audio that plays when the augmented reality experience is activated, which further links the digital layer to the physical artwork. The piece also brings flora associated with Depeña’s and Esmail’s ancestral backgrounds into the installation through augmented reality.
The final section of the 2.5-mile route ends with three stops: Other Earth Cedar Forest 1, Other Earth Cedar Forest 2 and Ancestral Future: The Taino Portal. These works can be viewed in and around the King Street Station Plaza.
Ancestral Future: The Taino Portal appears at the entrance to the exhibition Ancestral Future: Taíno Archives by Gabriel-Bello Díaz, which is on view at ARTS at King Street Station. The installation creates the impression of flowers and plants bursting from the main entrance to King Street Station, giving the impression of stepping through a portal into another world. It presents Indigenous past, present and future as existing at the same time.
Viewed on a phone or other device, the digital environment overlays the physical entrance with plants from the Pacific Northwest and Puerto Rico growing through the existing structure. It also includes ancestral symbols and landscapes inspired by Taíno, Arawak and Borikén culture. The setting blends nature, imagined cities and spiritual symbolism, giving the work a futuristic and ancient quality at once.
Future Arts says the installation is intended to feel immersive, reflective and somewhat surreal. It is meant to encourage viewers to slow down and notice what may be masked beneath everyday spaces, including history, language, land and cultural survival.
The project arrives as Seattle prepares for a large number of visitors during the 2026 World Cup. Future Arts presents the initiative as a civic project formed by art, culture and community rather than by spectacle alone. It says Other Earth is designed to encourage movement, discovery and community spending through a narrative rooted in the city’s cultural life.
The organisation also frames the project as a response to the widening wage gap between the technology and arts sectors in the region. It says the project brings together technologists, artists, non-profits and small businesses, with the aim of creating a long-term asset for the city and its creative economy.
Future Arts Way is the organisation’s largest flagship public art initiative and follows earlier pilots. Agog: The Immersive Media Institute is the title funding organisation. The Office of Arts and Culture is a sponsor. 4Culture is supporting community programming. Seattle Magazine is the media partner, while the Downtown Seattle Association and Seattle Metropolitan Chamber are civic partners.
Future Arts Way is scheduled to launch in 2026 during the FIFA World Cup and remain live through the end of the year. The project is being positioned as a city-scale augmented reality art experience which connects visitors and residents to Seattle’s history and culture through mixed reality narration and interactive public art.
Future Arts is a women-led non-profit in its fifth year. The organisation says it creates programming and opportunities to bring accessible, technology-led art to Seattle by supporting under-served artists and storytellers working with technology. It says its work intends to bridge the wage and social gap between the technology world and the creative communities that sustain it. The organisation adds that technology reflects common human values, behaviours and passions. It says the way people design and use technology reveals their artistic identities, and that its values are inspired by emerging strategies in nature and powered by communities.
