Skin to Skin: Performing Augmented Reality - Augmented Reality Art - page 158

Something similar occurs when physical and digital 'bodies' coincide in perfor-
mance. One is confronted with the 'old' notion of the performing physical body,
alongside the 'new' digitized version of that body. Definitions of both drawn from a
now out-dated dualistic view of the physical and digital must be sifted through and
responded to in the moment of watching such a performance.

9.3 Augmented Reality Performance

The concept of augmented reality acts as a point of disjuncture in this discussion.
Augmented reality is usually thought of in terms of a particular technology that
recognises images in the physical world, which then trigger image overlays to be
projected as if co-existing with the scene the observer is viewing. However, in
this discussion, we wish to broaden this idea to consider the concept of visually
overlaying the physical and digital regardless of the technology used, in order to
begin to map how augmented reality artwork both informs and is made possible by
this concept. To do this, we discuss three digital performance works created at the
Deakin Motion.Lab.
The first work, Shifting Skin , 3 created by Alison Bennett, provides a perfor-
mative, embodied encounter with a series of photographs created using a flatbed
scanner to create images of skin, and specifically of skin with scars and tattoos
(Bennett 2013 ). When viewers observe a series of photographic prints through an
iPad, an augmented reality overlay appears, generating depth in relation to the
colours in the image. As Fig. 9.2 demonstrates, the work creates an augmented
reality overlay of screen based content with fine art print. The print and screen
based content presents alternatively flattened and expanded skin as a metaphor for
surface. The augmented reality creates the illusion that the virtual content projects
out of the print, and that they are directly spatially connected, for indeed they are,
conceptually. The 3D topology is an inversion of the surface data captured in the
scans. The experience of viewing Shifting Skin is performative in the sense that
observers are able to move in relation to the image and the iPad to obtain different
views. The work generates a sense of physical play that may have seemed at odds
with the digital and web-based nature of the digital overlay. Internet content can
potentially be omnipresent, in any place. However, when applied in an augmented
reality context, it becomes tied to a specific place. This was a locative use of internet
application in a field in which content is normally widely disseminated, and one that
juxtaposes physical and digital worlds in a way that is performatively created by the
viewers' physical actions.
The second work is an element within an evening-length work currently in
development called The Crack Up 4 (see Fig. 9.1 ). This scene, created by John

3 Shifting Skin opened at the Deakin University Art Gallery, 24 July-31 August.
4 The Crack Up will premiere in Melbourne in October 2014.