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.

Social Networking Sites: Safety First

The rise of social networking sites makes people put a lot of personal information on the internet. The idea behind this is simple. How more complete and updated your profile is, the more easier you are to find on the web and the more friends you get.

I always found it interesting to see how Hyves has generated a function in it's program that points out other people you would like to be friends with because you could possibly know them. Nine out of then times they indeed selected persons you like or at least know. Sometimes this can be quite surprising because there are often persons included that aren't related to your other friends and can't be linked to anyone. I often question myself how this is posible. How did they find out? Do they secretly use other information that is found on other devices such as your userlist on MSN or?

The urge to put your personal facts on the internet also has a downside. How more you fill in, the more people know about you and this can be annoying or even dangerous. A while ago there was a warning advertisement that all the members of Hyves received that was adjusted to the information you have on your profile. It showed a couple of criminals that were looking for a human target. They could tell a lot about you by checking out your profile, such as: where you live, where you go to school, your name and a picture of you. This showed how people could easily abuse this information to get to you.

Next to this possibility to gather information about certain people from these profiles, the networking sites are also sellling certain information to compagnies. They state that the information that is given is anonymous but this is not the case. So even when you are really careful with the online publication of your information this doesn't mean that you are anonymous and 'safe' as is stated in the article 'Social networks make it easy for 3^rd parties to identify you' that is written by Jacqui Chen this month.

It is a fact that a lot of websites share some data about it's users to advertising partners, but when this comes to social network sites this information is not anonymized. This sharing happens trough 'leakages' whereby the advertising compagnies can link the information they receive from social networks to your personal information as your name and where you live when they make a bit of an efford. This is possible because your profile has an unique identifier. They can also track your Web browsing activities. As is stated in the above mentioned article this could have unknown consequences because this information could be revealed to future employers that for example could find out that you often visit sites about burnouts. This could be because you think you have one or maybe you only know someone who has one and you want to help him. This could effect your chance on getting a job. The only thing you can do to avoid such situations is to lock down as much information as possible. Here is a guide that describes what is the best way to do so.

By reading this article a lot of questions came to mind. How do they exactly gather information? Is it used for other purposes than advertising? Is it legal to do so? Shouldn't there be regulations? How will this develop in the future? Will everybody know everything about everyone or will there be more rules about this to prevent the abuse of personal information.

Wikipedia: On the Value of Information and the Concept of Censorship

It's a fact that people more and more gather information from the internet and other digital sources instead of learning -to master- that information. What will be the long term effects of this development? Does the posibility to search and read about almost everything that exists increases our knowledge and understanding of the world or will it lead to people who can't function without it and don't know anything anymore by themself? A well known example of this are the instructions for all kind of activities you can find nowadays on the internet such as how to make mashed potatoes. This way people won't bother to memorise anymore how this is done because they can easily find a tutorial for this on the internet.


Another consequence of this development is that they learn and gather information from websites such as Wikipedia. What are the possible effects of this encyclopedia on the general knowledge of people? Hereby we foremost have to study how the information on this so called online encyclopedia is gathered. How is the value of the written information determined? When is certain information valid and when not? Who decides what's true and whats not?


To show the importance for a critical look I would like to refer to the case of the Wikipedia page of the Scientology Church. There was a lot of fuzz about it because it was used by the members of that church as a medium of propaganda. Wikipedia has even banned members of the church to contribute to their page. There is an article about it written on Wired. This raises the question were the boundaries lie on the use of Wikipedia and who exactly decides what's reasonable and whats not. This topic though is already discussed by a lot other members on the blog. Where I want to concentrate on is that when I searched for information about the Scientology event, I bumped into another article on Wired which tells us that a lot of compagnies adjust their pages on Wikipedia for their own good. They even pay specialists to engage in astro-turfing to remove critical opinions as is stated by the Centre for Internet and Society. This means that the information on those pages is certainly not objective or legitimate. However the Society Church case was the first case that the site has taken such drastic actions to block those edits.


The above article reveals that although it seems that the information that is published is well chosen and selected, there is a lot inaccurare information to find. It's interesting how this will develop in the future. Will it be possible to make all the information on Wikipedia objective and neutral or will there always be a certain sense of subjectivity and what could be the consequences of that when people more and more rely on it?

Review of Re-Inventing Radio – Aspects of Radio as Art

The conference '100 years of radio' in 2006 which was an collaboration between the Ludwig Botzmann Institute Media.Art.Research, Linz, Austria and Kunstradio became a key point of departure for the realization of the book where media theory, art history and the practice of international artists interlink. This book can thereby be seen as a catalogue.

There is no unified history of radio art. The main reason for this is that a common future of many technological discourses lack historical consciousness. This book explores a radio art “whose roots outside an institutionalized ars acoustica were somewhat obscured in the sixties and seventies by the modernist division of communications art into seperate and seperately discussed specific entities”.

The book contains 45 articles which are all related to radio art. Some of them are written of a historical point of view, some of them are quite technical and other articles are written by radio artists or describe radio art projects (like kunstradio). I enjoyed reading the book although I didn't had enough time to read it throrougly. Because the goal of the book is to inform the readers about the phenomenom of radio art in various ways it is not easy to write a summary. Therefore I collected statements and sentences of the articles which I use to give you all a general idea of the topics discusses in the book and the phenomenom radio art itself.

There are different definitions mentioned in the book about the content of the concept of re-invention. Three of them are mentioned below. These definitions give you a little more information about the topics that are used in radio art.

• “To rethink, reconceptualise, and revive the radio medium as an archive, thinking and engaged medium.” (Gilfillan)

• “Revisiting and reimagining trailing edge or 'residual' technologies such as terestial radio.” (Fritz)

• “Deconstructing 'casting' in both broad- and narrowcasting by reminding us that radio is 'not' only a mediaform but also a phenomenom of radiation and resonance.” (Kogawa)

Radio is often only seen as a medium to transmit music and information to people. The goal of radio artists described by Iges is that they “try to interfere with the standardized and therefore nearly always too predictable broadcast schedule by endowing the content of their projects with greater capacity to alienate. The whole of radio art constitutes an interference in that medium.” (Iges)

Gilfillan reacts further on this matter by saying that “radio art not only interferes with the broadcast schedule, but also creates a temporary autonomous zone of performance and dialogue”. This is interesting because a lot of the authors in the book discuss the topics of censorship and politics in relation to communication by internet and radio:

“Demonstrate the power of networked radio space in opening up lines of communication and collaboration between artists to circumvent traditional modes of radio broadcasting and bypass regulations seeking to limit access to networks within the global teleconnumications infrastructure. The freedom to move information within these networks, but not to move or create knowledge, maintains them solely for the economic structures of globalisation. The projects opens these channels as a temporary autonomous zone of performance and dialogue.” (Gilfillan)

Although the book is about radio art, the internet is a lot discussed topic. The internet is hereby often discussed in relation to the concept of communication and how this can be related to radio art itself and the creation of groups who make it. Nevertheless they have a lot critique on the use of the Internet and on the passive nature of humans. A lot of artists like to make interactive projects, but people don't want to do anything but getting entertained:

“Many artists realised that the Internet is not so much being used as the medium of exchange and communication as it is explored as a medium of distribution. The utopian idea of using the internet as a dynamic continious social environment hasn't been realised.” (Couy)

“I would claim that the (linked) comuter is not so much a machine that seves to establish dialogue with others as an apparatus that facilitates autistic monologues. The problem is that people don't want to be active, they want to be entertained passively” (Auer)

The last couple of articles of the book handle about the nature of radio and radiation. Artists try to reveal the underlying forces that make the transmission of radio possible. They describe natural phenomenoms such as the aurora and how they can make it into art. They also try to make people listen to the interference that is all around us but nobody ever hears:

“What the work of radio art reveals is the struggle to reveal what is already there.” (Milutis)

So it is clear that the book contains all sorts of different approaches. I especially liked to read about the projects because I found it at first hard to imagine how the ideas that are mentioned in the book would come to expression. Because I'm not really into the real experimental artforms I found it sometimes hard to understand why people would do certain things. A good example of this is the registration of the route that Bechtold followed during the opening hours of the Austrian Exhibition at the Demarco Gallery in Edingburgh in 1973. He communicated his location to a person with a map by using a walkietalkie. I understand that it is radio art because it involves a radio, but I find it very difficult to see this as an interesting project and that people could like this and I also don't really understand why it is art. Nevertheless I liked the idea of using radio to make art and I found the different approaches to use this medium to do so very interesting. Before I read the book I didn't knew anything about radio art so it was very interesting to explore all the characteristics of it. The book gives a clear and variated glance on the phenomenom radio art and I advise everyone to read it.