The Aesthetics of Liminality: Augmentation as an Art Form - Augmented Reality Art - page 111

5.3.5 Body as Landing Site: Wearable AR

In my 1999 essay Towards a Culture of Ubiquity (Lichty 2013c ) , I trace a trajectory
of where interaction/delivery of media/mediated reality would be situated. First is
the screen, then into the hand(held) device, then onto the body, and then onto space
and architecture. Although wearables and locative technologies have happened far
more in parallel than I envisioned, the general trajectory seems on track. There
are multiple tectonic lines of creation happening that are overlapping, such as the
Oculus goggle/AR and Epson Moverio goggle/Meta AR platforms. One might also
argue that Google Glass fits in this category, but I would argue that Glass and its
contemporaries are more about hands-free wearable computing than AR. All of
these emerging devices are coming, but are also coming into being by tapping into
the mass imaginary by the use of design fiction.
In popular culture, the world of AR has given way from science fiction to design
fiction, although there are excellent examples of AR as trope in topics like William
Gibson's Spook Country (Gibson 2007 ,8) , which features a subplot about AR artists
depicting the deaths of celebrities at their place of demise. There are plenty of
examples in movies as well, from Minority Report's dressed-up version of Oblong's
user interface (Underkoffer 2010 ), and the adaptation of Vonnegut's Harrison
Bergeron, 2081 (Crowe 2010 ) . However, as it seems, science fiction is giving way
to “design fiction” as a way to capture the popular near-future imaginary. The
leading design fiction in 2013 involving the embodied AR gesture, and ironically,
the ultimate “chick device” (and I use that phrase with a healthy dose of derision)
is Sight (Sakoff 2012 ) , a dystopic AR fantasy by filmmakers Eran May-raz and
Daniel Lazo. The opening scene finds our protagonist, Patrick, mime-flying in an
austere room. In the next shot, we switch to his eyes, which have been equipped with
Sight Systems' lenses, which show him playing a flying obstacle course. “Sight”
technology has apparently revolutionized life as we know it, from augmenting the
contents of the refrigerator to making such mundane tasks as frying an egg or turning
cutting vegetables into a “Master Chef” game. The story turns darker as in Fig. 5.18 ,
Patrick goes out on a date, using Sight to choose the ideal wardrobe and social
approach using his “Wingman” app. After making a few initial gaffes, Patrick wins
his date over, and we find out he is, in fact, an interface engineer for Sight Systems
itself. They go back to his apartment for a nightcap, and his date notices that Patrick
forgot to turn off his scoreboard on the wall, and sees that he has been using the
Wingman, and storms off. This is actually not a problem, as he reveals that the
secret feature of Sight is to be able to hack consciousness itself, and this is where my
axiom that most authors should not write their last chapter. This is due to the fact that
although Sight offers marvelous insight into the probable future of embodied AR,
the worn trope of mind control sneaks in. It is also a commentary of technoculture's
growing distrust of Sterling's notion of the five global vertical monopolies he calls
“the Stacks” (Madrigal 2012 ), as Sight is an obvious commentary on Google Glass
taken to its logical extent.