Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 2
Critical Interventions into Canonical Spaces:
Augmented Reality at the 2011 Venice
and Istanbul Biennials
Ta m i k o T h i e l
2.1
Introduction
In the 21st Century, Screens are no longer Borders. Cameras are no longer Memories. With
AR the Virtual augments and enhances the Real, setting the Material World in a dialogue
with Space and Time (Manifest.AR
2011
).
In 2011, using the recently developed mobile technology of geolocated aug-
mented reality (AR), the author was the primary organizer of two interventions
into art biennials: in Venice together with Sander Veenhof and Mark Skwarek for
our cyberartist group Manifest.AR (Manifest.AR blog
2013
) and in Istanbul in
collaboration with the Istanbul design team (PATTU
2013
). With geolocated AR
artists can place virtual computer graphic artworks at specific locations via the site's
GPS coordinates. The artwork can then be viewed by anyone on site in the display
of a smartphone or mobile enabled tablet as an overlay on the live camera view,
merged with the surroundings as if the artwork was there in real life.
Both Venice and Istanbul - bound together through centuries of often contentious
history - are spectacular cityscapes and sites of former empire. They continue to
fascinate not only for their spectacular settings and artifacts of their past glory, but
also for their cultural presence in the globalized contemporary art world. The Venice
Biennale, founded in 1895, is the world's oldest art biennial and arguably the city's
main claim to relevance as a contemporary international destination. Istanbul, long
in decline after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, has been reinvigorated in the past
decades by Turkey's rising political and economic power. Its art biennial, founded in
1987, is a showcase for Istanbul's new position as a dynamic center of contemporary
international culture.
