Wearable Apocalypses: Enabling Technologies for Aspiring Destroyers of Worlds

Abstract

2014 is the centennial of the birth of William S. Burroughs (novelist, essayist, painter 1914–1997). In honor of this I examine “Apocalypse”, an essay on the possibilities of street art that he wrote as a collaboration with Keith Haring (pop and graffiti artist, social activist 1958–1990). While written in 1988 this essay can serve as a guide for current and future artists who work in Augmented Reality interventions into public spaces by situating their work within a 2,000+ year old cycle of revolution and counter revolution in art, culture, and spirituality. My contention is that looking backward to pre-modern mythology in this way provides larger frame of reference that is even more useful to contemporary Augmented Reality artists than it was to the graffiti artists of the 1980s that this essay was originally discussing, as the technological and artistic affordances of mobile devices have expanded the possibilities of street art to begin to match Burroughs’ vision.