The next thing to burn your eyes: locative media and augmented reality
This was originally going to be tagged on to the end of my previous blog post about my recent return residency at STEIM. I formed a tenuous link between Amsterdam and the fact that VICE/Nike have created a new app to help iPhone owners get the most out of Europe’s greatest cities, Amsterdam being one of them. However even VICE have journalistic standards to uphold and my pay masters decided that one lousy paragraph at the end of the ‘long and winding road’ that was my residency’s write up was just not good enough to warrant twenty five squids. Fair play to them and shame on me for thinking I could get away with such wanton reckless blagging.
So I’ve decided to write a whole post on the subject of locative media and augmented reality which seems prescient given that everyone is plugging this as the next big thing and when I mention it to non art/tech types I’m still met with blank stares. Before I get into a review of the art and tech of locative media and augmented reality I’ll hit you with my plugged content and earn my monies. Yay for acid soundtrack, nay for Nike who officially suck for abusing pro-skateboarding, worker’s rights and children.
The ‘party line‘ from VBN is that VICE and Nike have teamed together to release an iPhone app called TRUE CITY to help cultural sponges mop up more good times in Europe’s major cities. Paid content promotion aside this is actually pretty interesting stuff as locative media and augmented reality are probably the future. Personally I’m gonna hold out until the whole thing is mounted in ray-bans and I can get the locations of the best crack houses and hookers beamed straight to the back of my retinas. But if you are rich enough to own Apple’s premiere black shiny status symbol (or mugger’s delight – take your pick) and you’re interested in the locations of the best record shops,clubs,events and whore-houses you should download the app and give it a go. Apparently it works by magic and relies on an elite team of cultural vampires to update the app’s database with the locations of the coolest shit and the freshest meat. Just like if you mess with regular vampires they can turn you into a foot soldier of Satan’s army, if you upload the locations of enough cool shit then the app’s moderators will turn you into one of them. Before you know it you’ll be living in Shoreditch, wearing half a watermelon on your head to trendy parties a-la something out of Nathan Barley.
Probably for the best I didn't have access to this form of distraction during my residency or I'd have spent even less time in my atelier working.
DL and have a look! http://bit.ly/NikeUK
This is only the latest in a long line of augmented reality/locative media iPhone apps and before that art installations and military tech development that probably started with ‘head up displays‘ in fighter jets. By this point you’re probably starting to wonder what the buzzwords ‘locative media’ and ‘augmented reality’ mean. This is wandering a little off the kind of development work I do as part of my artistic practice but I’m happy to pontificate on it. Given that a fair portion of the lab at SARC seem to be interested in it, or working with it as part of their practice, I’ve sat through some interesting (and not so interesting) seminars on the subject.
Locative media is basically a buzzword to describe any kind of media content that is tied to a particular geographic region. Normally the set up is this. You have some piece of tech, a GPS enabled mobile phone or a ’special box’ that an artist has hacked together and then the ‘media content’ (i.e. sound/music/visuals/text) spat out by the phone/box/whatever changes depending on the geographic location of the person carrying the tech.
Augmented reality is a bit different in that it basically revolves around the idea of taking a real image and superimposing some extra visual data over the top. Augmented reality is kind of implicitly ‘locative’ in that the tech nearly always augments the reality which is right in front of you, i.e. the local geography of whatever you’re pointing your trendy iPhone’s camera towards.
Speculatively speaking I would say that locative media, within the arts, is on the verge of getting a bit stale and transmuting in to something new, probably augmented reality flavoured. This is just my opinion but how many site specific ‘walkman journeys’ can the arts spew out before the punters start to feel like they’ve heard it all before? Before I get into an epic flame war with any locative media based artists I’d like to state that I probably only feel this way because I often tend to be more interested in how tech artworks work, than the artwork itself. So my opinion counts for very little, it’s like saying how long will punters be content with staring at painted canvas? Obviously the art will continue to develop with the technology. Personally though I’m kinda bored of soundwalks. However while researching around this piece I did find a really interesting article at networkedpublics.org that was talking about how locative media may develop.
“Locative media has been attacked for being too eager to appeal to commercial interests as well as for its reliance on Cartesian mapping systems, yet if these critiques are well-founded, they are also nostalgic, invoking a notion of art as autonomous from the circuits of mass communication technologies, which we argue no longer holds. This essay begins with a survey of the development of locative media, how it has distanced itself from net art, and how it has been critically received before going on to address these critiques and ponder how the field might develop.” – Beyond locative media by Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis
Mmm, lovely academic art speak. Note that it points out the attack on appealing to commercial interests, art’s ‘anti-money’ stance has always made me laugh, but I digress.
Matthew Green is a colleague and friend of mine at SARC doing his PhD in the art of locative media. You can read about some of the cool stuff he gets up to with it over at his blog. His installations have been in The Grauniad’s arts section and he’s had residencies in the far east and everything so I’m officially jealous of his success. I wrote to him earlier today to ask for the skinny on the best examples of locative media and augmented reality. Here are his top picks for the arts:
And for the apps:
Which Matt describes as being ‘all a bit like RJDJ for the iphone….’. But Matt’s top pick for locative media artworks are Brighton based collective Blast Theory ‘who make city wide games/experiences by utilising various technologies’. Sounds tasty.
When it comes to augmented reality, writing about it is kind of pointless given the oodles of youtube videos that have been uploaded and slobbered over by tech heads. Personally I say sod the mobile phone I want a headset that looks like something Hicks from Aliens would sport when going on a bug hunt. But then I also want a pulse rifle with over and under grenade launcher. Here are the videos.
So what are we left with other than two new ways to distract ourselves into walking into lamp posts and remove ourselves further from the people around us? What use is locative media and augmented reality going to be to artists given the magic is (allegedly) wearing off with each corporate application? Comments plox, let’s get a debate going.
P.S. Robin Price does not endorse the taking of hard drugs, the prostitution of women or the use of forced labour by sports clothing companies.
P.P.S Neither can he occupy the moral high ground because he takes kickbacks from VICE and currently owns at least fifty items probably produced by child labour. He is however simply racked with lower-middle class guilt which makes it all OK.
P.P.P.S About the next big thing. It’s a good tune and it always has been.
