Skin to Skin: Performing Augmented Reality

Abstract

Augmented reality technologies open up new techniques for art creation and simultaneously provide the conditions for new conceptual domains in which art can be created and experienced. This is particularly true in the case of digital dance performance, as well as the digital augmentation of images to create performative gallery experiences. This chapter undertakes an examination of the use of augmented reality in recent examples of digital performance and installation investigation at the Deakin Motion.Lab. In particular, we discuss the concept of ‘digital dualism’ as a means of mapping some of the conceptual shifts augmented reality makes possible for dance and performance technology. Digital dualism sees the disjuncture between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ in digital performance, as in life, as an artefact of an earlier technological/cultural moment in which the digital had not yet become embedded within and a conduit for everyday life. We argue that digital performance within an augmented reality framework provides a demonstration of the inability of digital dualism to stand up even in relation to what might be considered the most unlikely candidate for digital distribution—the embodied experience of the human body. These works open up a dialogue around the ways in which augmented reality technologies enable a conceptual shift in digital performance and installation.