The Aesthetics of Liminality: Augmentation as an Art Form - Augmented Reality Art - page 103

Fig. 5.7 Matt Mills' TED talk demonstrating Aurasma technology (Image Courtesy Aurasma

2012)

recognizing gaze through aiming a mobile device at an image of the Scottish poet
Robert Burns, as in Fig. 5.7 . By scanning the image, a perfectly overlaid video of an
actor, approximating the trompe l'oeil of the painting, appears and begins to orate.
While more sophisticated than the fiducial gesture, AR feature recognition of media
is often an overlay of content onto print media. Examples are a recent IKEA catalog,
allowing users to place virtual furniture in their apartment, or video overlaid in a
Costco (an American big-box retailer) circular. All of these augments are, in this
writer's opinion, either simpler than or at best equal to a fiducial, creating a simple
semiotic swap.
Esquire Magazine also uses this technique in a famous example in its Augmented
Reality issue in 2009, 'graced' on the cover by Iron Man star Robert Downey, Jr.,
as illustrated in Fig. 5.8 . What was unique about this issue is not only the fact that
the fiducial markers summoned a mass of entertaining media through the issue,
but reorienting the markers would elicit different responses. Turning the marker
sideways would cause Downey Jr. to lounge on his side, playing the raconteur in
another way, cause the fashion models to be represented in another season, or call
forth another “Joke Told by a Beautiful Woman”. This publication used the potential
of the fiducial and planar gestures extremely well in not using the orientation of the
marker as for mere orientation (tilt, rotation, etc.).
As interactive interfaces emerge in all AR technologies unique possibilities. One
other campaign executed through the planar mode of augmentation stands out as
having a unique utility of testing medical aptitude from a public audience. Creative
agencies VML and GPY&R Melbourne's 2012 Mobile Medic campaign for the
Australian Defence Force (VML website 2012 ) consists of a public poster with
recognition and augment markers placed throughout the image, as in Fig. 5.9 .