A domestic robocop is scary but probably inevitable. And hopefully the future of augmented reality won’t be as distressing and intrusive as London-based artist Keiichi Matsuda puts it….
Augmented Reality (AR) is still in its very early stage of development as a way of reaching & communicating with the customer (although it’s been in development as we know it today from the late 80s & early 90s) and thanks to the iPhone apps (Layar, World Surfer, Acrossair…) or Sony’s PS3 (Eyepet) the mediated reality has become extremely popular within the last 3-4 years.
As you probably know AR can be defined by its ability to overlay physical space with information. It is part of a paradigm shift that succeeds Virtual Reality; instead of disembodied occupation of virtual worlds, the physical and virtual are seen together as a contiguous, layered and dynamic whole. It may lead to a world where media is indistinguishable from ‘reality’.
Well, we may get all our home appliances and mobile devices for free if we accept in exchange a little advertising in our daily life… a very interesting study around interactive social media & architecture that Keiichi produced for his final year Masters in Architecture.
He began working with video during his Masters of Architecture at the Bartlett school (UCL) as a critical tool to understand, construct and represent space. His research examines the implications of emerging technologies for human perception and the built environment, focusing on the integration of media into everyday life.
If you have some free time these last days of summer and want to read Keiichi’s thesis of a hyper-virtual “domesti-city” you may well visit his thesis page.
