Augmented Reality Art: a Matter of (Non)Destination
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Augmented Reality Art: A Matter of (non)Destination Christine Ross Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University 1-514-398-7368 [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper examines the ambivalence of “destination”—namely 1. INTRODUCTION the ambivalence of the user’s interpellation—as one of the key features of augmented reality (AR) art. It calls attention to the special status of the spectator whose participation is at once a requirement and an uncertainty, a prediction and an anxiety, a principle of localization and a questioning of the very capacity to localize. This ambivalence is endemic to AR environments which rely on mobile, networking, tracking, sensing and detection technologies. My main claim is that, as a perceptual paradigm, Figure 1. Paul Milgram, et al., Reality-Virtuality Continuum AR’s potential innovativeness lies in its ability to generate new ways of perceiving for the spectator or to disclose what was As Paul Milgram’s schema specifies, the real-virtual continuum— previously unperceived—unseen, unheard, unfelt. These ways of the unbroken scale ranging from real to virtual environments—is perceiving are structurally rooted in the ambivalence of the foundational assumption of digital forms of augmented reality destination. This structuring feature, however, is recurrently (AR). AR builds up a continuous succession between the real and sidestepped by the interactive setting of AR art. Required to the virtual, in which the two categories tend to lose their interact; destined to act specifically and to insert him or herself in distinction in relation to one another. It is this very concept of the a standardizing logic of community formation; allegedly “in direct real-virtual continuum that underlies Ronald Azuma et al.’s contact” with the immediate environment despite extreme definition of AR as a system that “supplements the realworld with virtual (computer-generated) objects that appear to coexist in the mediation: the spectator turned user, YOUuser or interactor is 1 solicited as a destinataire (a recipient) in ways that most often same space as the realworld.” This supplementing occurs by counter the possibilities of AR as an ambivalent mode of adding dynamic, interactive, and context specific information to destination. The paper investigates three AR environments by the user’s sensory perception of space. This perceptual dimension artists Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Mathieu Briand, and Christa is pivotal. In medical applications, for example, a surgeon can Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau to show how these traits either now wear a head-mounted display (HMD) device equipped with a counter or favour the perceptual potential of AR. semi-transparent visor which fuses his or her perception of the patient’s body with the preparatory study of the internal anatomy projected on the screen. Augmented reality is a perceptual Categories and Subject Descriptors paradigm. Considering that the definitive (yet still unachieved) H.1.2.[User/Machine Systems]: Human factors, human goal is “to create a system such that the user can not tell the information processing. difference between the real world and the virtual augmentation of it,” the perceptual motivation underlying AR research carries General Terms several technical challenges, notably the imperative to perfect the Performance, Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory. panoply of technologies that converge to assemble a mixed real- virtual continuum for the observer-participant, from audiovisual Keywords (head mounted, wall mounted, handheld) display and playback Augmented Reality, Art, Aesthetics, Interactivity, Perception, devices to human-machine interface systems to body-tracking, Community. sensing and surveillance instruments, one of the most difficult technical challenges being the requirement for the computer to track where the user is looking and determine what s/he is seeing 1 Ronald Azuma, Y. Baillot, R. Behringer, S. Feiner, S. Julier, and B. MacIntyre, “Recent Advances in Augmented Reality,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 21, 6 (Nov./Dec. 2001), 34. DOI= http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/cga2001. © Digital Arts and Culture, 2009. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission from the author. Digital Arts and Culture, December 12–15, 2009, Irvine, California, USA. in order to augment his/her view.2 This has been from the start, urban territory are tracked by satellites to appear online as avatars this is, the impetus of AR explorations. next to avatars created by computer players, but only through the diverse delays involved in Internet connections and the multiple In the field of art, AR environments are, effectively, a derivative time gaps that separate the moment when an avatar is caught and of site-specificity installation art in which site is de/un/re- the runner’s official announcement of his or her catch. In the two specified by the activation of computer generated data. These works, technology is rooted in the surveillance systems which dynamic sites are achieved by connecting spectators to have become an integral component of our public spaces; and the networking systems (mobile phones, GPS, the Internet), sensing, user is posited both as a tractable individual and a fleeting subject. tracking, and surveillance technologies, as well as robotics, which The augmented reality artwork declares “Here you are now” but enable the processing of different forms of data—texts, images, simultaneously asks (let us follow psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron sound, light, even heartbeats and smell. The status of the spectator here): “Where are you now?”3 The positioning of the spectator is in these settings is quite unique: s/he is expected to be enhanced not an act but a search, a question, a desire, a verb, an anxiety. perceptually but also to evolve interactively, often polysensorially and collectively, with the work. Let us think, for example, of My main claim is that, as a perceptual paradigm, AR’s potential Seiko Mikami’s Gravicells: Gravity and Resistance (2004), which innovativeness lies in its ability to generate new ways of proposes a platform covered with panels of string-like lines that perceiving for the spectator or to disclose what was previously deform as the sensors underneath react to the participants’ weight, unperceived—unseen, unheard, unfelt, unsmelt. These ways of tilt and velocity: the changing platform is calculated by GPS perceiving are structurally rooted in the ambivalence of systems that register the changes in the space, a calculation destination. This structuring feature, however, is recurrently displayed on different wall panels that enhance the real-time sidestepped by the interactive setting of AR art. To clarify my dynamic between image, body, gravity, sound and light; Usman claim, let us go back briefly to Usman Haque’s Evoke (2007) Haque’s Evoke (2007), an animated projection on the façade of mentioned in my introduction, an animated projection on the York Minster which lights up in response to the voices of the façade of York Minster which lights up in response to the voices nearby public; and Christian Moeller’s recent robotic arms, built of a nearby public made out of anonymous individuals. The to move a ship propeller (Daisy, 2008) or a theatre spotlight multicolored lightening of the building occurs as a collective (Mojo, 2007), connected to surveillance cameras: these surveilling phenomenon; it is preprogrammed to respond to the manifold robots follow and face passers-by in an attempt to establish voices of a group. This example is emblematic of the AR contact or simply (as in Nosy, 2006) to randomly film passers-by applications I am trying to map out here, applications which rely and project their image in bitmap graphics on large glass panels of on the three following principles. First, to paraphrase W. J. T. adjacent towers; as well as Audio Grove (1997), an interactive Mitchell’s famous terminology about contemporary images light and sound installation composed of a wooden platform (“What do images want?”), the augmented reality artwork largely supporting vertical touch-sensitive steel posts: visitors who touch wants an interactive, localizable yet anonymous addressee (a the posts produce a soundscape which in turn triggers different shouter or singer, for example, as in Evoke). It has a democratic spotlights that eventually illuminate the whole space. In all of underpinning, one that belongs to what Jacques Rancière has these works, users are invited to interact—perceptually, called the aesthetic regime: its recipient is not a specified recipient sensorially, and collectively—with the system. But the system is but any visitor, any spectator, any user. But this “any user” exists persistently searching for participants—sensing, seeking and only insofar he or she is technologically detected. Second tracking bodies for the sake of communication, collectiveness, and observation: in most cases, the augmented reality artwork wants to interactivity. provide reciprocity to this addressee—another anonymous addressee (shouter or signer) with whom to cooperate as My talk examines the ambivalence of “destination”—namely the corporeally and immediately as possible.