Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
to create wireless fidelity get distorted in the wildernesses of the Earth, as do
the signals from GPS satellites. The basic write-around is downloading the entire
augment before walking out of cell-range into a pre-connected world, and hope that
the GPS stays relative. This is not optimal and incredibly Unstable. A portable Wi-Fi
signal must be brought into the pre-connected wilderness, like an iron lung, for AR
to keep breathing on site.
This is one of the banes of the site-specificity for works of AR art. The
Exit
Glacier Terminus Project
is built on-location. To experience the piece, viewers must
drive to Seward, Alaska, and go through the entire process of loading the application
and layer on their devices, then carry a Wi-Fi hotspot out to the site with them. Once
there, the ebb and flow of the GPS causes the piece to move as you are standing
still viewing it. This is not unlike problems Earth Art faced. It is a problem of
being, the existence of the work itself, without even getting into the meaning or
quality of the work. Few people literally went out to view Robert Smithson's work
in situ to evaluate it in person, or meditate at it, or whatever viewers do when they
view a work of art. One of the concerns here is that documentation of the work
becomes a keen feature in the process of viewing it, since that is precisely how most
viewers will experience it. It involves a certain sense of wandering and tenacity to
get to a geocoded POI in person, albeit one more in line with the nineteenth century
notion of the
flânuer
in the city, since metropolitan areas are where POIs tend to
be most stable. Benjamin wrote, “the anamnestic intoxication in which the flânuer
goes about the city not only feeds on the sensory data taking shape before his eyes
but often posses itself of abstract knowledge—indeed, of dead facts—as something
experienced and lived through” (Benjamin
1982
). In rural Alaska, the flânuer is akin
to naturalists like John Muir, walking the city streets and National Parks, seeing new
landscapes by virtue of the same 'anamnestic intoxication' for the natural world as
the flânuer, sort of fascinated and cool at the same time, constantly seeking out
new points of interest. Hoy has written that, “AR technology encourages a praxis-
based approach to spatial knowledge. Its incorporation of mobile computing means
that the body is activated in a process of movement and spatial exploration” (Hoy
2013
). The 'anamnestic intoxication' would be the theoretical body knowledge and
inherited collective memory, flooding the viewer on location.
The fact that mobile AR must be viewed through a mediator (smart device) lends
itself to a global aesthetic usage. When most AR works are viewed, they can be
captured via screen grabs or photos as they actually are. Reproductions of these
works can be more artistically mannered, or through proper documentation, have a
higher resolution than viewing on site. It is a portion of the human aesthetic that gets
disturbed, the way we are intrinsically linked to the places we are at. Breathing on
site, or observing a cloud pass in front of the sun, as the POIs stay digitally backlit,
seemingly unaware of the solidity of the objects in the environment in which they are
placed. The issue that remains for site-specific AR, and one that becomes important
for the global audience is how to experience a large-scale geolocation-based AR
work, without having to travel there.
