Augmented Reality Activism - Augmented Reality Art - page 10

Fig. 1.7 Mark Skwarek, arOCCUPY app , Shows Wall Street bank bailout amounts (2011)
(Images reproduced courtesy of the artist)
“Meet the MakAR” project (shown at Eyebeam's Activist Tech Demo Day) you can
see and hear the worker as they build your consumer product. The app workers when
the smartphone's camera is aimed at a consumer product. When the app recognizes
the product it generates a real life worker who possibly made it with audio telling
their story.
In the project Erase the Separation Barrier AR was used to create a large hole
through the Israeli Palestinian separation barrier (see Fig. 1.8 ). The separation
barrier is a wall that segregates Palestinians from the Israeli population. People
may not move freely from one side to the other. Military checkpoints are the only
gateways. To pass one must have official papers and wait in lines that can take well
over two hours. For many people, life inside the barrier is all they have ever known.
The Erase the Separation Barrier project allows people on either side of the barrier
to look through the wall and see what was actually on the other side. For some this
might have been the first time they had ever seen what was on the other side of the
wall. The most recent satellites images, a topographical map, and documentation
from ground level at the site of the hole were used to create an accurate model of
what was on the other side of the wall. Erase the Separation Barrier is an example
of diminished reality. Diminished reality removes parts of reality with AR instead
of adding to reality. Future iterations of the project would updated with real time
satellite feeds increasing the resolution of the experience.