The Aesthetics of Liminality: Augmentation as an Art Form - Augmented Reality Art - page 97

propose five categories of augmentation, and if any are overlooked, I hope it will be
because of new developments since this writing. These techniques consist of the five
categories mentioned above, Fiducial, Planar, Locative/GPS, Environmental and
Embodied/Wearable. While some of these categories overlap or may have indistinct
boundaries, such as the intersection of the fiducial and planar recognition, it is hoped
that they give the critical scholar studying augmentation a discursive toolset. Each
of these modalities situates the viewer, content, and overlaid environment in ways
that create specific gestures of media delivery.
When speaks about gestures in AR, I reference two of my other essays that
take a similar analytical approach to examining situations involving virtual media,
The Translation of Virtual Art (Lichty 2014a , 444-462) , dealing with art in virtual
reality, and Art in the Age of Dataflow (Lichty 2013a , 143-157), which examines
the development of electronic literature since Joseph Frank's theorizing the notion
of Spatial Literature in the 1940s (Frank 1991 ). My contention is that there is there is
an origin, content, and Arakawa & Gins' concept of a 'landing site' (Hughes 2012 )
for the augmented gesture, which is a destination in a process of communication,
but not necessarily a basic sign/signifier relationship. The reason for this is that in
AR, although there can be these simpler situations between the viewer and media,
like planar recognition calling forth video overlays, there are others such as dynamic
media in GPS-based/locative installations. These include interactive environments
like Darf Designs' Hermaton installation, which I will discuss in the Environmental
section. As in The Translation of Virtual Art, the AR gesture varies in its relationship
between origin and receiver, from double signification in the case of Fiducial and
Planar, to a dynamic semiotic matrix of constant becoming-meaning in the case
of GPS/Locative applications. What I will attempt to do is to progress from a
more basic/historical framing of AR mediations and 2D situations, unpacking the
gesture into more complex sites of engagement, with the understanding that there
will be some examples that overlap and double themselves within my categories.
These categories are presented as propositions that are used as 'handles' from which
a discussion of the different forms of augmentation can be formed.
The 'gesture' as I call it, consists of a line of attention/flight between the
interactor and the superimposed media overlaid on the given environment, such as
attention given to a piece of media situated in 3-space, or by orientation as in the
case of fiducial tracking. As one can imagine, the semiotic relationship between
the interactor, the environment, and the augment becomes complex, as simple
media overlays become multi-faceted interactive experiences to dynamic augmented
spaces that can be updated on the fly.

5.3.1 Fiducial AR

One of the earlier forms of Augmented Reality is that which uses a specific digital,
or fiducial, marker that gives a unique signature to an objective 'seen' by a computer
camera. This was the primary form of tracking for the works I first saw in the