[-empyre-] Reemergence of the Augment

[Turbulence.org]

Hi All,

In reading Alan's post, specifically his questions "how does one break the enclave - the sense of privilege AR implies" and "Is there a technology that doesn't require technology" -- I immediately thought about a project that I posted on Networked_Performance (http://turbulence.org/blog/2011/04/09/these-walls-could-talk/) two days ago: "These Walls Could Talk." 

The author of the call for participation, George Bixby, wrote:

"These Walls Could Talk is an attempt to reinterpret the historical narratives found in our history museums, through alternative audio-tours of the the American Museum of Natural History. These original audio-pieces are inspired by specific dioramas in the Culture Halls of the museum. These halls contain depictions of people throughout history and from around the world. However, as the “cultures” which they purport to represent continue to change, the dioramas remain static. These Walls Could Talk is a collaboration in which contributors from diverse backgrounds give new voices to these characters through approaches including fiction, auto-biography and archival sound."

I was drawn to the project because it involves dioramas -- an "old" 3-D technology that is meant to transport us to an "other" time, place, and /or culture -- and because it's one of the few AR projects I've come across recently that superimposes an alternate narrative in sound rather than in images (an older example is a 2005 Turbulence Commission, "Itinerant" by Teri Reub: http://turbulence.org/Works/itinerant/).

Dioramas and audio recordings are old technologies that may or may not "break the enclave": that is, museums are a privileged spaces and, despite the ubiquity of audio recording devices, many still do not have access to them. Thus, the smartphone enclave is one amongst  many when it comes to AR.

In response to Craig's post about location-based monuments, see Carmin Karasic, et al's 2007 Turbulence commission, "Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments" (http://turbulence.org/works/HyperMonument/). This piece -- set in the vicinity of the Boston Common -- "uses GPS and mobile technologies to address historic bias in Boston's public monuments. The artwork gathers non-official stories to socially construct hyper-monuments that exist as digital doubles, augmenting specific historic monuments."

Warm Regards,
Jo

Jo-Anne Green
Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.
New York: 917.548.7780 Boston: 617.522.3856
http://new-radio.org
http://turbulence.org
http://somewhere.org
http://networkedbook.org
http://turbulence.org/blog
http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review
http://turbulence.org/upgrade_boston


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