Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
redefining AR, we should think of those 'VR pipe dreams', which were disregarded
for the use of less encapsulating smart phones, and then reinvented again, as a more
transitional and ubiquitous form between VR helmet and phone, and know that
artists are going to misuse Google Glass, or whatever the object in common usage
is
eventually.
The unintended usage of objects being spread from local application to
application—is part of the nature of memetic reproduction and variation, and is
the way networked media aesthetics create niches in media ecologies. As biologist
Richard Dawkins, who coined the term
meme
, explains, “Just as genes propagate
themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm and eggs, so
memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via
a process, which in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” (Dawkins
1976
)This
imitation of usage is evident in the way some youths are smashing the screens of
their smart phones, in a stylish sort of identity protestation, like the torn jeans of
the 1980s (Wax
2013
), “a new meme will have a greater chance of penetrating the
meme pool if it is consistent with other memes in that environment” (Distin
2005
).
The anti-tradition political-aesthetic practices of the Situationist International
gained a newfound relevance when Internet browsers became a widely used format.
Psychogeography
is one of these object-practices from SI, it is a way of participating
in the world based on the human situation within it, or developing an aesthetic that
mitigates between the unseen history of the immediate environment or the psychic
artifacts left in our ecosystems, (this connection between Situationist
praxis
and
locative media was referenced in
Spook Country
as well). OOO refers to these
objects as reflexive objects. Or in Foucault's pre-OOO observation, “a form of
reflection
:::
that involves for the first time, man's being in that dimension where
thought addresses unthought and articulates itself upon it” (Foucault
1970
).
Geolocative AR is still currently in the public sphere, free for anyone to access,
and no permits needed to put a POI in a secure location, as with Sander Veenhof
and Mark Skwarek's collaborative work from 2010,
infltr.AR
(Fig.
13.4
), which put
virtual hot air balloons porting Twitter feeds from the outside world into the White
House and the Pentagon. Essentially, the White House and the Pentagon are part of
the public wilderness that viewers can see from an enclosure and take pictures of.
Just like tourists on a road trip through the Midwest US, it is a true point of interest,
in its original context, part of the American Landscape, made for visitor locations,
or great places for an anamnestic photograph. Secured government facilities are not
wildernesses that are protected per se, but definitely objects that are actively being
preserved, and left relatively unknown to the normal citizenry.
Both augmented reality and the wilderness are difference engines, which create
entanglements in communities; they are also object-ideas that are not anywhere
in particular. They are 'viscous' global objects, like the Internet and the World
Wide Web. Morton refers to these sort of global objects that are both 'nonlocal'
and 'viscous' as
hyperobjects
. One of his key examples is global warming. It is an
object that cannot be reduced to a singular object one can touch—a happening and
concept in the world that has visible effects and consequences, which can work to
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