Google Created an AR Experience to Tell the Story of the Stonewall Riots [Video]

On Tuesday, Google—along with The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center and the National Park Service—unveiled an interactive augmented-reality experience. The AR experience and accompanying website tell the story of the 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a popular West Village gay bar that’s now a National Historic Landmark honoring the city’s LGBTQ rights movement.

The AR experience is at Christopher Park in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, which has a sculpture commemorating the neighborhood’s historic involvement in the LGBTQ rights movement. When visitors download the Stonewall Forever app and scan their surroundings with smartphone cameras, hundreds of rainbow-colored particles digitally appear—each leading to digitized archival materials from the movement’s early years. The footage includes unseen photos along with video and audio from LGBTQ movement leaders …