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that galleries and exhibitions coalesce into a common aesthetic sensibility. Works
created in one platform may tend to focus more on marker-based AR, or perhaps
more easily incorporate different forms of media as their overlay.
Furthermore, many of these platforms, such as Junaio or Layar, frequently embed
their pieces as “channels” which are found through a browsing section of the
app. This in turn affects the artwork, whose code is encompassed by that of the
framework, by placing it in context beside other pieces. The artist may create their
own context independent of the platform, but it is also very likely that a channel
used for artwork is listed alongside promotions for a new movie, or an interactive
ad in a magazine.
7.5
Physical as Subscriptive
This concept of “channels” is one that is used in many different digital media
services, providing a way to aggregate content viewers show interest in, or want
to be continually exposed to as more is authored. The interesting twist that AR
potentially provides to this arises through its conflation of digital assets and physical,
both of which comprise the artwork in totality.
In works that use physical artwork (such as prints or sculpture) as their AR
anchors through markerless tracking - such as From Closed Rooms, Soft Whispers
(Garbe 2013 ) - the digital is overlaid to provide the second part of the piece
(Fig. 7.2 ). Prints can be distributed, and the work experienced in a variety of loca-
tions outside the gallery once the exhibition is concluded. However, exciting new
capabilities arise from the fact that the digital assets for AR pieces can be stored on
a server, or in project files which remain on the artist's computer. Subsequently, the
AR content can be modified, remixed, or even changed wholesale at a later date by
the artist, and those changes can be propagated out to the prints or physical objects
owned by gallery viewers. This adds an entirely new valence to the idea of the print
or reproduction as an art object, allowing it to function itself as a sort of “channel”
to the artist, totemic or not, where new work can seep out from the artist's central
server to affect the display and experience of their work long after the art object
was acquired. This gives unprecedented control to the artist to affect work already
existent in the world, but may also come with a price, in the increased ephemerality
endemic to all work relying on the more transitory substrates of digital media.
7.6
Closing Thoughts
Interactive new media works challenge traditional interpretive methods in many
ways - their exceptions and special cases are as variegated as the artists and
mediums used in their composition. The addition of interaction complicates audi-
ence reception and segments viewers into active participants, and more passive
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