Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 18
Wearable Apocalypses: Enabling Technologies
for Aspiring Destroyers of Worlds
Damon Loren Baker
18.1
Introduction
While Art is the most fundamentally creative human activity, it is my contention that
artists themselves have more to gain out of breaking worlds than in building them.
To clarify (and to head off any fears that I am calling for acts of mere terrorism
or genocide), by worlds I mean the interlocking systems of conceptions we use to
organize and explain our experiences (
Weltanschaung
and
Erschlossenheit
- not
planets. Ontology not geology) and by breaking I mean introducing elements that
defy enclosure within those systems (
Reductio ad absurdum
and
non-sequitur
- not
bombs. Glitches not deletion). While these tactics of destructive augmentation have
a long and noble history in the arts going back to Surrealism, Dada and beyond,
recent advances in several technologies (and even more importantly, in the access
and distribution of these technologies in the form of mobile devices) have made
them especially effective and worth re-examining for those artists working in the
medium of Augmented Reality.
What follows is an investigation of a collection of specific approaches drawn
from the writings of the author William S. Burroughs about visual artist Keith
Haring's graffiti inspired work and a discussion of the emerging technologies enable
and extend them into use in today's world.
