[-empyre-] Augmented reality as public art, mobile location based monuments and virtual memorials

[John Craig Freeman]

> From: "xDxD.vs.xDxD" <xdxd.vs.xdxd at gmail.com>
> 
> this is a great reflection, and i think that this is the main limit in researching on the possibilities of AR using software like Layar, Junaio et similia.
> 
> this (the use of closed platforms like Layar, Junaio and others) is just about my only doubt related to almost all the AR initiatives i am seeing.


With respect xDxD, This is a bit like arguing that artists should write there own web browsers rather than use Mosaic in 1991, or perhaps I am misunderstanding. Of course artists should be using commercial augmented reality browsers. Their wide spread use is establishing standards and protocols which will provide an infrastructure for the AR of the future.

The more interesting and salient question -and this is where I think I am agreeing with you- is, do artists continue to make objects, even virtual ones, as was the norm in the twentieth century, or do they develop practices which are sustainable across technological development, which can be iterated and migrated as new technologies emerge.

Imaging Place began as a web based internet collaboration in 1997 http://imagingbelfast.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/legacy-imaging-the-miami-river/. It was quickly migrated to Macromedia Director where it found a home for over ten years http://institute.emerson.edu/vma/faculty/john_craig_freeman/podcast/ImagingPlace_2008/. The project was implemented in Second Life  in 2006, where I was able to develop a networked social component, which was sorely missing in previous versions. The content was largely derived from the archive of material I had amassed up to that point. Imaging Belfast, 2009, was authored in Unity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJBRm0QviZ4&feature=player_embedded. Most recently, I have been preparing to migrate the Imaging Place archive to AR technologies using commercial augmented reality browsers http://johncraigfreeman.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/imaging-place-ar/ and by using QR code street signs posted on location where the content was originally produced http://johncraigfreeman.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/augmenting-place/.

Virta-Flaneurazine has been through a similar migration across technologies and continues to evolve http://virtaflaneurazine.wordpress.com/virta-flaneurazine/. Although, in the beginning in 2008, the project used Second Life, it was never a Second Life project. It is a conceptual performance/installation which exists simultaneously in the virtual, physical, art and clinical worlds. As the meta-narrative goes, during the clinical trials in Xi'an in 2009, the drug was replicated on the black market and spread quickly across Asia. The street version of VF, often referred to as Blue Dragon, was soon available in Europe and North America http://virtaflaneurazine.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/riding-the-blue-dragon/ (don't click on the image). The wide spread, non-clinical use of the drug lead to a breaching of the software barrier and began infecting social networks across the Internet, including: Twitter http://virtaflaneurazine.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/vf-twitter/, Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcjjxF0Oow8&feature=player_embedded, http://virtaflaneurazine.wordpress.com/page/2/, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Gvngx1NBQ&feature=player_embedded, Chat Roulette http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejCr_MIUL7w&feature=player_embedded, and now, of course, in augmented reality http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI_JxlQCNsQ&feature=player_embedded.




John Craig Freeman
Associate Professor of New Media

Emerson College
Department of Visual and Media Arts
120 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116-4624
(617) 824-8862
john_craig_freeman at emerson.edu
http://JohnCraigFreeman.net