Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 13
Augmenting Wilderness: Points of Interest
in Pre-connected Worlds
Nathan Shafer
13.1
Introduction
Figure
13.1
is a QR code for this chapter, which will launch a channel called
“Augmenting Wilderness” when scanned using the Junaio mobile AR application,
so that the reader can hear some of the audio tracks embedded in this essay, or
follow some links to cited works. This chapter also makes the same work available
on an identical channel, on the Layar mobile app. Augmented reality art is gaining
common relevance by recuperating into this type of commercially viable interactive
print, which is based on targets instead of geolocation. It is easier to monetize and
advertise with. AR in contemporary usage, however, remains an intrinsically global
and viscous practice, whether it is functioning in this sort of consumerist enterprise
or if it is a radical intervention of everyday life.
This chapter is going to look at a few projects that have constructed AR works in
the worldwide public sphere—works steeped in the anti-tradition, practicing a flat
ontology and presented on the borders of an increasingly connected world. They are
unseen hubs in a worldwide social network; temporally localized, globally mobile—
multiplicitous points of interest in the wilderness.
I am Sitting in a Room
was produced in 1969, one of the earliest compositions
to incorporate electromagnectic tape and feedback (Fig.
13.2
). The piece takes
Lucier's recorded voice and records the playback of it in a room, where the room
itself restructures the work into ambient static, ultimately getting rid of Lucier's
stutter and creating a resonant frequency.
Today Lucier's work is an early representation of the way artists can intertwine
digital media and physical location to develop mobile augmentations in the world.
