Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
13.8
Variety and Application
Earth art experienced a similar problem in display, but Smithson's praxis of the
site/non-site
provides a way of adapting to the presentation of AR artworks in formal
situations. An earthwork created on site in the mountains is visible to the few who
get out there and see it, the GPS-equipped hiker, or tech-savvy flânuer. This is the
site
of the work of art, and it is the same format as a geolocation-based AR piece,
like 'Exit Glacier'. When the work is displayed in a gallery or museum, Earth artists
would make an indoor earthwork, which they called a
non-site
. As Smithson states
in
A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites
, “(it) is a three dimensional logical picture that
is abstract, yet it represents an actual site
to understand this language of sites is to
appreciate the metaphor between the syntactical construct and the complex of idea”
(Smithson
1996
). A non-site equivalent in AR works is the target-based POI, which
locates a work with a displayable target. Ultimately, when AR develops significant
collectorship with dealers it will most likely be a target-based enterprise, with AR
artists committing their extra energies to developing large geolocation-based works
as their flagship projects, that are not for sale. The thing about site-specific AR
however, is that no matter how intrinsically or technically the POI is tied to a literal
geo-coordinate, the POI is digital, and it can be in a 1,000 places at once, this is
part of its regime of attraction; POIs are digital objects that overlay our mediated
experiences of the world. AR is by nature, a nonlocal being and a global medium.
It is pleasantly unstable and bound to the Earth the way vampires are bound to the
moon.
Borealises
(Fig.
13.6
) is a collaborative work between Christopher Manzione's
Virtual Public Art Project (VPAP) and myself, and was included in a Manifest.AR
group show called
Bushwick: AR Intervention
. It was originally conceived as an AR
version of the northern lights to be displayed over Anchorage, which has horrible
light pollution in the winter. The northern lights are rarely seen from within the city
during our long dark months. AR browsers provided a way to see the borealises
on mobile devices when the light pollution obfuscates them. With the global,
multiplicitous nature of AR, the original animated POI went up in Bushwick, as
part of the group show, at the same time it went up in Anchorage.
Geolocation doesn't have to be in a singular altitude, latitude and longitude (the
geo-code). Putting POIs up in an AR browser is like putting a blog post up on a
website (third-party platforms). The direct observation of the work does not have to
be on-site, and it rarely is. Gail Rubini and Conrad Gleber, of v1b3 (Video in the
Built Environment), made
NEWzzzzz
(Fig.
13.7
) as part of the annual
Wintermoot
Mixed Reality Festival
(Fig.
13.8
) in Anchorage, held during Fur Rendezvous, a
festival held around the Iditarod sled dog race, at the close of winter in Alaska.
NEWzzzzz
is a scrolling feed of red letters comprised of various headlines from
newspapers in rural Alaska. It is relative geolayer, that is, it is visible to anyone who
opens the layer, wherever they are, because it is geo-coded to be exactly where the
mobile device connecting to the layer is. Location is the target.
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