Augmented Reality: From Interactive Music Videos to a New World Perspective

In this post I would like to continue on the subject of augmented reality implemented in our daily lives that is brought up by Kesh.

John Mayer is the first artist that has made an augmented reality videoclip. To start the video you have to download a symbol on your mobile phone which you have to hold before your camera on your computer (in the example video there is made use of a Macbook). The moment the camera captures the symbol the video starts. In it you can see John Mayer playing his song Heartbreak Warfare in some kind of living room. By moving the mobile phone the living room mimics these movements. So when you move away from the camera the room becomes smaller and when you tilt the phone the living room also moves. This is an interesting development since our surroundings become more and more interactive and a medium as television is still quite static. Although there exists digital tv where you can skip commercials and watch shows whenever you want, you are not actively involved in shaping the programm itself. With the implementation of a camera in our televisionscreens this becomes possible.

The same concept is used by Doritos where they made Blink 182 perform in a bag of crisps. To be able to see this special concert you had to buy a bag of their chips with a special taste (Late Night). On the bag was also a picture which you had to hold before your screen to make the video start. This brings up another possibility of the use of augmented reality. Artists were already linked to certain brands to increase their popularity, but now this becomes much more interesting and people will be more attrackted to these devices since they are a lot more personal.

This concept creating a personal approach is the most important aspect of augmented reality. It makes it possible to perceive an image or video in an unique and personal way. You can somekind shape your own reality. I think it is interesting to question the possible consequences of this development since people will use the device in different ways. Although the examples above are only small projects you could theoretically lay an extra layer over our whole 'normal' reality and create your own world. An application on bigger scale hereby could be the architecture and appearance of buildings since virtual layers of contextual information could overlay the built space.

In the article 'The Poetics of Augmented Space' (2006) Manovich talks about these possible applications of augmented reality in our daily life. He hereby concentrates on the concept of space and describes the above concept as augmented space. He states there is a close connection between monitoring and augmentation in our high-tech society since you need to have information about a person to be able to offer personalized information. The overlaying is therefore often only possible by tracking and monitoring the users. So therefore augmented space is also monitored space.¹

The technology of augmented space makes is possible to add new dimensions to the 3D physical space which makes it multi-dimential. Therefore the psysical space contains many more dimensions than before. This has as a consequence that the old geometric dimension loses a part of its importance. This can be understood as part of a larger paradigm shift. Modern society is no longer organised around the straight lines of human sight...² So although now the applications of augmented reality are only on small scale and most of all a lot of fun, they will have a lot of influence on and consequences for the future of not only our world image but also on the way our society will function.

Making of video's

John Mayer

Blink 182

1 Manovich, Lev. “The Poetics of Augmented Space” (2005), p. 8.

2 Manovich, Lev. “The Poetics of Augmented Space” (2005): p. 8.

Stelarcs' Ideas Brought to Life in the Movie "Gamer"

"Gamer is a high-concept action thriller set in a near future when gaming and entertainment have evolved into a terrifying new hybrid. Humans control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online games: people play people.. for keeps. Mind-control technology is widespread, and at the heart of the controversial games is its creator, reclusive billionaire Ken Castle. His latest brainchild, the first-person shooter game “Slayers” allows millions to act out their most savage fantasies online in front of a global audience, using real prisoners as avatars with whom they fight to the death." (source: Website)

In this movie some of Stelarcs' ideas have come to reality since it is possible to control the movements of other people on distance. Stelarc sees the body capable of becoming a host, not only for technology but also for remote agents. This means accessing, interfacing and uploading the body itself. You must hereby see the body as a server to connect and transmit data.

“What becomes important is not merely the body’s identity, but its connectivity – not its mobility or location, but its interface..”[1]

The most important idea of Stelarc that is manifested in Gamer is the concept of Fractal flesh; the idea that a body can extrude its awareness and action into other bodies or bits of bodies in other places. This is exactly what is done in this movie. The players of the game control the bodies of the prisoners in the game. The prisoners can say what they want, but their body is in total control of the player. This means that there is a sense of cooperation between the player and the prisoner since the prisoner can tell the player what he should make the prisoner do.

The issue here is that Stelarc remarks that his version of Fractal Flesh is not about a master-slave control mechanism, but about feedback-loops of alternate awareness, agency and of split physiologies. Since I haven’t watched the movie yet by writing this post I don’t know how this is worked out in the movie. Though the fact that the prisoner can discuss with the player what he should make the prisoner do suggests there is no case of split physiology since the player entirely decides which movements the prisoner can make.

In the theory of Stellar movement is possible by using a Stimbod: a touch-screen muscle stimulation system. This is different than in the movie because there the movements of the prisoner are mimicked by the player. So the player doesn’t push buttons on a manual but makes the same moves he wants the prisoner to make. The prisoner can hereby be seen as a host body since it can’t control itself but serves the intentions and actions of the player.

So although by seeing the trailer of Gamer the movie seems to be a real life example of his ideas put into practice this is not the entirely the case. When you take a closer look you discover some of his core ideas are not worked out in the way Stelarc would have wanted. Although I like the possibilities of the described techniques more in the way Stelarc describes them, I’m afraid the reality in the future will be more like the one sketched in the movie since people have a hunger for power and people don’t mind to make money despite other people’s feelings and even lives.

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[1] Stelarc, “Parasite Visions: Alternate, Intimate and Involuntary Experiences” (1990’s), p. 1.

Twitter and the Rise of Impersonal Communication

Before the rise of twitter there already existed older -digital- communication devices that shared the same idea: short and fast communication between people. Those were mainly writing, faxing, emailing, chatting and later sms text messaging. In the case of chatting these messages formed whole conversations while short text messages (sms) were at the beginning mostly sent to let someone know he wouldn't make an appointment on time or to ask how someone is doing. When the mobile phone rates became lower people started to use sms more to 'slow chat'. Twitter is the accumulation of this. It is used to let people know what you are up to and where you think about at any moment in time and people can easily react on this.

All these devices are not without consequences for the general communication between people. The advantage of Twitter on sms is that you don’t sent a message to one person at a time anymore but everyone who wants can receive and read it and react on it immediately. This is possible because everyone can select whoever they want to follow on the website. The downside of this is that it increases the possibility that people read things about you they were not supposed to. It also makes communication a lot more impersonal because you don't write messages that are written for one person in special anymore.

These electric communication devices also replace actual conversation more and more. People don't get together anymore to talk but communicate by telephone, Skype and most of all their cell phones. Because almost everyone has unlimited internet on their phone nowadays Twitter has been capable of coming a widely, easy and cheap way to communicate.

People are attracted to all these devices because they have a natural desire to express themselves. Expression hereby matters as a form of believe as is stated by Tolstoy.¹ People have to discharge their feelings and thoughts and communication is hereby therapeutic. Twitter takes this to the max by telling everyone everything in a easy way.

So at one point Twitter helps people to express themselves. On the other hand it makes this communication more unpersonalized than older devices. This alienation is a specific characteristic for modern society. This is caused by the professionalization of humanity. Messages are no longer personal. The life of individuals is captured in a network of professionalized processes that get more and more complex as is stated by van den Breambussche.²

In the future communication will change even more in my opinion. The image will become a more important medium to communicate because one picture can carry a lot of information. It is also evident that people remember more information from images than text. The transition from text to image is already a long time evolving but I think this will be the next main development after Twitter since shorter text messages are not really possible so we have to find other ways to express ourselves even easier in the future. A good example of this are emoticons that already exist for a while. They enhance the emotions expressed in a message that is send and can even be responsible for the correct understanding of a message. This is a way of expression by representation. Emoticons hereby bear the trace of a particularly humanized presence.³ In the future these images will probably be moving though. Images are also very important to use in our messages because as is stated by Gunkel emoticons form the artificial warrant and guarantee of the human in cyberspace.⁴ This will become more important in the future when our world becomes more and more controlled and inhabited by robots and other computers in the professionalized processed world we live in nowadays.

So although Twitter seems the ultimate communication device I think in the future we will become more dependent on images to express (and prove) ourselves. Hereby we must prevent that personal communication will disappear.

Braembussche, A. A. van den. Denken over Kunst. Een inleiding in de kunstfolosofie. Bussum: Coutinho, 2000.

Eldridge, R. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Camebridge University Press, 2004.

Gunkel, D. and D. Hawhee. “Virtual Alterity and the Reformatting of Ethics,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 18, no. 3&4 (2003), 173-193.

1 R. Eldridge, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Camebridge University Press, 2004), 97.

2 A. A. van den Braembussche, Denken over Kunst. Een inleiding in de kunstfilosofie (Bussum: Coutinho, 2000), 208.

3 D. Gunkel and D. Hawhee, “Virtual Alterity and the Reformatting of Ethics,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 18, no. 3&4 (2003), 180.

4 Ibid., 182.