Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.5
Mark Skwarek and
Joseph Hocking,
theleakin
your hometown
, Augmented
BP logo (2010) (Images
reproduced courtesy of the
artist)
now act as billboards for the activist cause. The activist simply alters the target's log
and or commercial image creating a subversive version of the original. The majority
of the work has already been done by the activist's target. AR logo hacking is the
equivalent of the Situationist's detournement with modern technology. What makes
AR special from past forms of subversive media remixing is that once the logo hack
has been created it affects all the logos of the target entity around the world.
“The leak in your home town” was a smartphone app which overlaid the British
Petroleum (BP) sun logo with an AR broken 3D pipe with oil gushing from it.
The work was in reaction to the BP oil pipe disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in the
summer of 2009. During the BP gulf crisis live video feeds of the broken BP pipe
at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico dominated the media. “the leak in your home
town” turned the 2d TV image into a 3D experience (see Fig.
1.5
). To active the
piece, viewers had to download the app and then aim their cameras at any BP logo.
Once the app recognized the BP logo the same broken 3D pipe would emerge out
of the BP flower. Then the black boiling smokey oil would plum violently upward.
People could walk around the pipe in 360 degrees with their smartphones while
watching the animated smoke. The broken pipe and smoke would appear every time
they viewed a BP logo with the app. The app tied the spectacle directly to BP's
corporate image. The app was the first activist work with mobile AR and is cited by
World Trademark Review as the first “AR logo hack” (Smith
2010
).