The Aesthetics of Liminality: Augmentation as an Art Form

Abstract

Since its emergence as an art medium, Augmented Reality has developed as a number of evidential sites. As an extension of virtual media, it merges real-time pattern recognition with media, finally realizing the fantasies of William Gibson through goggles or handheld devices. This creates a welding of a form of perceptual vision and virtual reality, or optically registered simulation overlaid upon actual spatial environments. And even though AR-based works can be traced back into the late 1990s, much of this work required at least an intermediate understanding of coding and tethered imaging equipment from webcams to goggles. It is not until the advent of marker-based AR possessing lower entries to usage, as well as geolocational AR-based media through handheld devices and tablets that Augmented Reality as an art medium would begin to propagate. While one can make arguments that much AR-based art is a convergence between handheld device art and Virtual Reality, there are gestures that are specific to Augmented Reality that allows for its specificity as a genre. In this chapter, we will look at some historical examples of AR and critical issues of the AR-based gesture, such as compounding of the gaze, problematizing the retinal, and the representational issues of informatics overlays. This also generates four gestural vectors analogous to those defined in The Translation of Virtual Art (Lichty in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), which we will examine through case studies. Through these case studies, historical and recent to the time of this publication, we may determine the issues of the gestures and aesthetics of AR.

Note to the Second Edition: In the years since the publication of the original essay, many advances have taken place in the genre, both technologically and aesthetically. However, in reviewing this essay, the author also notes that some of the examples given have become historical in nature, although the theory remains sound. Given that there is little history of Augmented Reality Art at this time, the author has decided to refine the theory somewhat, keep many of the examples as historical material, and add updated works as a bridge to the time of this publication. Although some of the older works may seem dated, it is my hope that when placed in context with newer work, a continuous timeline may be seen to unfold.