Immersive Art in Augmented Reality

Abstract

Google Glass brought a new level of excitement to Augmented Reality for the mainstream. It did not, however, bring the type of features that most AR enthusiasts have been looking forward to for decades. AR has traditionally been defined by the capability to integrate real-time 3D computer graphics into a person’s field of view in such a manner as to be convincing that they are as real as the physical objects surrounding them. Interestingly though, current AR technology has taken a turn away from this attempt at a sensorial suspension of disbelief in favor of a new social form of immersion. In this new model, space is collapsed not between the real and the virtual—but instead between people in distance and time. What was once a phone call is now a real-time mobile media stream of video, audio, text, hyperlinks, hashtags and sensor data. We can also quite simply capture our surroundings and post them as photographs, tweets, video and audio to cloud-based social media platforms whereby these are viewed by our social networks and then threaded, parsed and responded to as well as archived into spatial and temporal timelines. In context of this new mobile form of Augmented Reality that is based on social interactivity, artists are now beginning to explore the cultural potential this new medium can offer. This chapter will explore several components of this new artistic medium and some markers from art history and gaming culture that help to explain the history of how we have arrived at this new social AR medium. Specifically, we will look at socially immersive artworks and collaborative locative media as outcomes of this new medium based on social immersion rather than sensorial immersion.