Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 6.5
'We AR in MoMA' (Manifest.AR 2010)
process instead of hiding it. In a 2013 work which I designed for the artist Claudia
Hart, a custom app allows the viewer to see through a custom-made dinner plate—
as if beneath the material as in Trompe-l'œil, the digital grotesque lying beneath
the surface erotic and rotting (Fig.
6.7
). In the work, titled Nue Morte, through the
smartphone screen the viewer can see beneath their plate and food a languid virtual-
nude covered in crawling ants. The experience toys with the representation of 3D in
the two dimensional screen; the virtual is given the third dimension while the real
object, a plate, is just a two dimensional screen emphasizing the particular mediated
virtuality of the compositing process.
These works, like proto-cinema, are initial experiments in the medium showing
that of which it is capable. But a more mature AR(t), seeking out its essential
material and unique expressive potential, will grapple with making self-reflexive
AR to subvert AR ideology as it forms. For me, the greatest potential seems to
be in the repression of mediation in favor of a 'mediated-as-real'. In an early AR
work by Canadian artist David Rokeby, 'Seen' which was installed in the Venice
Biennale of Architecture 2002, four screens are connected to what seems like live
cameras in the Piazza san Marco (across town) altered with temporal effects filters
he designed. 'Seen', and works like it that create a sort of AR window experience,
are not just effected videos; the circuit and apparatus are essential. So much so
that, when unable to install a live HD connection from the piazza, Rokeby faked
the connection with a pre-recorded half hour capture that was then fed through his
filter; yet the description on his website remains, “The installation is made up of
4 video projections whose video material are calculated live from a single video
source;” it is then parenthetically noted that the live video was not, in fact, live.
