Augmented Reality Graffiti and Street Art - Augmented Reality Art - page 183

technological platforms to hybridize both human experience and architecture, in a
way that will help us process and navigate our urban surroundings (Mitchell 1995 ).
Understanding and controlling the socio-cultural, political and economic agendas
attached to the addition of virtual content to our experience of the city should be
high on the agenda of any emerging AR street artist. Iain Sinclair's politicized
interpretation of the contemporary psychogeographical experience suggests that the
detached wanderings of the flâneur are a thing of the past and that like our other
encounters of the city today, any AR facilitated experience of the urban will be
loaded with expectation and purpose (Coverley 2010 ; Sinclair 2003 ).
As well as changing our experience of the urban space, graffiti and street art also
challenges notions of the ownership of these spaces, especially if the acts of the
artist are seen as unsanctioned and interventionist (Wacławek 2011 , p. 9). However,
it is interesting to consider whether the qualities found in the virtual nature of AR
graffiti goes some way to disarming the criminal act inherent in physical graffiti.
In a number of ways the mediation of AR technologies produces a benign form of
graffiti, since no physical content is added to the environment, and the work can only
be seen while the viewer interacts with the space through the AR device. Moreover,
the process of creating AR graffiti (through the use of the computer) is quite a
different act compared to the visceral nature of creating physical graffiti, which is
associated with the smell and sounds of spray paint, the feel and effect of different
wall surfaces, and the influences of weather, lighting conditions, environmental
population and other hazards. That said, AR graffiti inherently retains a close
relationship with the physical environment, and the makers of AR graffiti still need
to work closely with physical spaces, sourcing locations, working with a specific
site, and building an awareness of the environmental and social influences that
impact on the space. Creators of an AR experience may also work with traditional
street artists, and the hacktivist/open source mindset of many of the AR makers is
sympathetic to the counter-culture positions taken up by many graffiti artists.
However, there is some debate about how and if graffiti is changed when it is
sanctioned by the art world, - perhaps through the loss of adrenalin and sense
of speed that is engendered through a fear of discovery (Ellsworth-Jones 2013 ;
Macdonald 2001 ). Like the commodified graffiti of the art world, AR graffiti
contains an inherent cultural legitimacy, if not economic value, created by the need
for digital technology to enable the experience, and notions of the digital divide. But,
although AR graffiti is not yet as ubiquitous in terms of accessibility to conventional
street art, the dramatic rise in the use of smart phones, mobile technologies, tablet
computers etc. means that the possibility for making and viewing this type of
work has the potential to rapidly expand, especially as these enabling technologies
become increasingly available and commonplace. Interestingly, as AR street art
becomes more popular, it remains to be seen if the existing tension between a
desire for anonymity and self-expression/recognition, which is played out between
conventional graffiti artists, who communicate with each other through a common
visual language and an unwritten code of practice, will be paralleled within AR
enabled graffiti (Macdonald 2001 ). Commonly with AR, and particularly when
it is used as an art form, there is no explicit instruction as to what the viewer