[-empyre-] Baudrillard, Virilio, AR fiction...

[Rodney Berry]

I find in Baudrillard a rich vein of metaphors, especially when thinking
about video see-through augmented reality.


One of Jean Baudrillard’s recurrent themes is that signs and signifiers have
broken free of that which they might have originally signified. This has led
us into a situation where simulation takes over various social processes and
our sense of reality itself. ‘Rolexes’ in Bangkok street-markets make us
numb to the prestige of the original. Finally signs begin to bear no
relation to any kind of original. We make maps for which there was never any
territory. In the absence of territory, we inhabit the maps. Our maps become
hyperreality – a real that is more real than real.


Video see-through augmented reality works like this:


A computer looks at video frames from a camera and searches for features
that it has been trained to recognize. These might be special fiducial
markers (as in the ARToolkit) or a more sophisticated method can be used to
pick out natural features of a scene and track them. The latter needs more
computing power to achieve, so fiducial-based techniques are still the most
common.


Once the computer has info about where and what a marker is, and which way
it is facing, it can generate 3D geometry and place it in the image as if it
was actually there.


So, here we have a camera located at the center of the universe. It is fixed
in position so that the universe revolves around it (even though the camera
might physically move around, the computer’s coordinate space is usually
centered on the camera so the computer sees the universe as moving about the
camera and models the 3D stuff from that perspective). The computer program
that looks out through the camera ignores most of what it sees except for
special signs in the form of special fiducial markers. As Milgram points
out, the extent of the system's world knowledge is an important factor in
merging the real and the virtual. In this case, the system's world knowledge
is complete, but only in terms of a universe bounded by the camera's frustum
and populated only by floating markers whose positions and rotations are
moments of significance in an otherwise empty void. These are, to take
Baudrillard a bit literally, floating signifiers that are finally linked
only to other signifiers. A shared seeing takes place where human and
machine both try to interpret the same signs in the world.


The computer then presents and altered version of the world surrounding the
markers. The human must once again interpret the computers interpretation
and, by responding changes the situation again for reinterpretation by the
computer. You and I might be looking at the same set of markers but our
individual AR systems might be showing completely unrelated images. The only
thing we share is the physical location and whatever meanings come along
with it.


Paul Virilio talks about machine mediated vision in terms of big and small
optics. Small optics is our normal level of magnification and use of optics.
Big optics allows us to collapse physical space by seeing events at great
distances at the moment that they happen. This confers advantages of elite
status to the privileged few granted this vision, surther disadvantaging
what Armitage calls the (s)lower classes.
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/1-2/1-2armitage.pdf


<http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/1-2/1-2armitage.pdf>

In fiction, augmented reality is portrayed as a privileged view of a hidden
reality. In Gibson's 'Virtual Light', the protagonist through the use of
special sunglasses is able to discover a plot to transform the inner city of
San Francisco, disenfranchising thousands of downtrodden people. In Chris
Carpenter's "They Live", a pair of sunglasses reveals hidden messages on
billboards to for the benefit of yuppie aliens that secretly control our
planet.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFT-R4N17g


<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFT-R4N17g>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live


<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live>

The eighties were a time of spectacular growth (for some) and the rise of
the young upwardly-mobile urban professional fuelled resentment among those
denied access to their new world. The access to privileged information
appeared to be the key to success with stories of insider trading, corporate
raiding and secret deals. These insiders were the *speed elite* of the
pre-internet age and the mythology surounding them was laced with speed -
fortunes won and lost in minutes, being ahead of the game, being in the know
before the average joe.


In both Gibson and Carpenter’s vision, you see the world of appearances with
the naked eye but you have to put on the glasses to see what’s ‘really’
going on. Our social world is complex enough for non-real things to have
very real effects in our real lives, for example, my bank balance is just a
number but it represents exchangeable value and I’m getting more stressed,
physically, as that number goes down.


 The Japanese anime, Dennou Coil (電脳コイル *Dennō Koiru*), centers around a
group of children who all wear special glasses that enable them to  see and
interact with virtual entities, usually in the form of cyber-pets.


http://www.animescentral.com/apps/videos/videos/show/11286331-denno-coil-episode-1


<http://www.animescentral.com/apps/videos/videos/show/11286331-denno-coil-episode-1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil


<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil>

Locked out of the adult world, children are privileged to their own closed
world inhabited by beings invisible to adults. Children are seen to be
adjusting to the new world more quickly than the adults. This is a world of
speed - of difference that differentiates. It is a world of continuous
partial attention where attention deficit transitions from pathology to
normality. The augmented human constantly divides her attention between
worlds and is plagued by the sense that, she might have just missed
something in one world while immersed in the other.
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