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aug•men•ted re•al•it•y

noun

a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view

–– Dictionary

Augmented Reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. With AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally manipulable. 

–– Wikipedia

AR2View is an exhibition catalog that brings together a collection of Augmented Reality (AR) artworks from nineteen media artists and two essay articles that review the field and the work inside. Unlike most catalogs, the pages link to media artwork wherever you and the catalog happen to be. It follows the experimental format of Scan2Go, which was distributed in Los Angeles at CAA’s 100th Annual Conference. Both publications include features designed to provide additional information to each page by using the text and image to function as interactive interfaces for mobile media hardware.

AR2View pushes the connection between the page interface and artists’ work by using the conference hotel as the context and trigger for experiencing artworks. By using Junaio, which is an image recognition application, photographs in AR2View will trigger a display of an artist’s digital media artwork on the screen as it is displaying the page image seen by the camera lens. The resulting composite view is an overlay of the computer-generated media accessed from an online database and the camera image. Each page in the book represents one artist’s media artwork.

This simple yet auspicious pamphlet is just one example of how artists have been adapting the published book into a conceptual art object. As the first media, print books are used as a found form to become an art space, object and experience. Published books are uniquely capable of melding artist imagery and conceptual intentions with audience curiosity and interaction in much the same way some media artists use the Internet. AR2View combines page space with references to hotel space and media art forms for the “reader” to interact with the page — to make something happen, to augment the page with computer generated media designed by the artist. In this way, AR2View continues the tradition of artists finding new relationships between media forms to challenge, sometimes with wit and playfulness, the expectations implied by what you are holding in your hands.

My thanks and much appreciation must go to Mimi Sheller and Meredith Hoy for their generous commitment to this project. Artists creating Augmented Reality artwork are at the edge of emerging digital social media and as such rely on the articles like Mimi’s and Meredith’s to help their work be seen and understood.

The Services to Artists Committee of the College Art Association sponsored the AR2 View exhibition catalog. Working together with Gail Rubini and Mat Rappaport, members of the media artist collective, v1b3, CAA has created a new space and method to exhibit and experience media based visual artworks.

Conrad Gleber
Professor
Director, Digital Arts & Media DesignLa Salle University

 

DOWNLOAD THE PDF CATALOG

ARTISTS, PROJECTS & ESSAYS

Conrad Gleber [essay], Project Introduction
Mimi Sheller [essay], Navigating AR2 View
Meredith Hoy [essay], Activating Space
Pat Badani with Desiree Agngarayngay, Power Potential
Greg Browe, Song of the ThornKing: City Passage
Celine Browning, Lacerated Cone, from series Pylons on Parade
Rachael Clarke, Nowhere
Joelle Dietrick with Owen Mundy, Particle Convergence
John Craig FreemanOrators, Rostrums, and Propaganda Stands
Chia-Ling Lee, I, Move
Chris Manzione, Scholar’s Rock
Barbara Rauch, Sleeping Goethe Dreaming about Schiller, 2012
Leslie Raymond, Katabasis
Michael Rees, Complex
Keith Roberson, spider-cabin
Joyce Rudinsky with Victoria Szabo, Psychasthenia Studio
Mark Skwarek and Patrick Lichty, The Coming of the (Silent) Spring
Nathan Shafer with Meme-Rider Media Team, Non-Local (An ARadio Work)
Thomas Smith, It’s a New Model Man
John Walter, Virus Necklace
Annette Weintraub, Slide Stories: Brutalism
Leslie Wilson, hotelDream