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Fig. 5.5
Occupy wall street AR mask
(Courtesy Mark Skwarek
2011
)
New York artist Mark Skwarek created novel uses for the fiducial marker on
the body. The first example is the
Occupy Wall Street AR
project, (Skwarek et al.
2011
,Fig.
5.5
) which was a political intervention by collective Manifest.AR. This
intervention took place
in front of
the Stock Exchange, which is unique in that
interventions and protest were only allowed in Zucotti Park. The intervention was
docented, as passers by were invited to don a helmet with a marker, and when the
wearer views himself or herself with the front-aiming camera, they would see the
engraved portrait of Washington from the US one-dollar bill instead of their head.
Skwarek would reprise this gesture in creating markers for “Virtual Halloween
Masks” (Poladian
2013
), where anyone could download a given marker and app,
and suddenly appear with a skull or jack-o-lantern head (or in their hand or wherever
the marker would be placed). These are both wonderfully playful applications of the
fiducial gesture. One other artist has used the Fiducial and the Recognition gestures
in his performance work, and presents segues between these gestural modalities.
Jeremy Bailey (the “Famous New Media Artist”) is a Toronto-based “Artist” who
uses markers-based AR in strange and unexpected ways. As Skwarek's placement
of the marker on the body induced a straightforward semiotic swap, Bailey makes
peculiar formal translations. His
Video Terraform Dance Party
(Bailey
2008
),
performed in Banff, Alberta shows him bobbing his head around, sculpting a
virtual island and populating it with virtual birds and citizens as he narrates their
creation. In Fig.
5.6
, Bailey remaps his entire face as a faceted television with
three “channels” that he controls with the tracking of facial markers that he tries to
