“When is AR going to be our default reality?”

During the past decade AR has been going through a transition from niche domain to a mass audience phenomenon. What used to be a lab only experience came into the hand of the public in 2009 with the first AR app on mobile phones. For believers in AR, looking through their screens at a prototype of our future world, it meant that from that moment on anything could be created anywhere by anyone.

Over the years the quality of the AR experiences has evolved radically. We now have better visuals and the tracking is more stable and reliable. For many domains the technology has finally proven to be truly useful. Still, despite the numerous areas and occasions we find ourselves using AR, it’s not yet playing a major role in our life. But that final step will follow soon. With wearables devices on the horizon, we’re about to enter a new era. The AR enhanced world might become our default reality.

Who will define what’s the default, when we live in a semi-digital world? Will Mark Zuckerberg decide for you what you’ll see, and what not? Or do you prefer to thrust Apple, or even Google? And what will drive the development of our XR life? Will we turn into full time consumers of products, data and services within the ecosystem that captured us? Will there be room for any home-grown content outside the main XR portals? Fortunately, there’s the independent web AR movement. But a technology can only thrive when there are both makers and viewers to use and appreciate about the things being made. The opportunity to life in world that appears as you want it to appear, is amazing. But to enable that, we do need to make sure there is an alternative realm of XR content. That’s not going to happen if we sit still, waiting for our governments to safely guide us into this new world. We need to jump in, try, experiment, understand, try again. Solve problems, at multiple levels. Let’s find ways ways to overcome privacy worries. And there are some practical issues to address too. And on a more fundamental level, we need to answer: what do we want to do in this infinite XR space anyway? What makes us happy, what makes us a human being? Which might become an extra challenge considering that we’re gradually turning into semi-digital beings.

https://www.realities-in-transition.eu/all-news

Don’t expect to find a winner in the augmented versus virtual reality debate, nor one killer app deciding the future of virtual experiences, argues Sander Veenhof.  Both VR and AR are bringing us many advantages, and just a few disadvantages, for which solutions can be found. Smart systems will help us to access relevant content at the right time and place, using the right device. We’ll live our future lives in a variable state of virtual immersiveness depending on our context and our whereabouts. While on the go, we will be confronted with a spectrum of apps ranging from text-based interactions to fully virtual environments – and beyond. Because with Google Cardboard we can intensify the VR experience by walking around a city while exploring a virtual world. The origin of this specific approach to VR coming from the augmented reality location-based background and fascination of Veenhof.   In his visual presentation, he will reflect on the problems, solutions and new (business) potential for the genre he dubbed “Outdoor VR”.

Tech Expo // October 5th // London

15th International Symposium on Electronic Art
Belfast, Ireland

Physical Virtuality platform – bringing real and virtual together, physically

“DIMENSIONAL MOBILITY”
August 28th 14:00h – Waterfront venue – Main Hall

Since its existence, art has always exploring every thinkable dimension. Having its origin in 2D, as flat surface painting, it moved towards 3D with sculpture and performance, explored the 2D plane further with video and it even got into a non-dimension with certain highly conceptual art pieces.

Being confronted with new (digital) tools and phenomena, artists are currently actively exploring the multi dimensional opportunities and hybrid-dimensional forms. Working in virtual reality, making virtual art and being a virtual artist, it’s a common practice in VR world such as Second Life where the art world is thriving with new artworks ‘not possible in real life’. Ranging from huge gravity ignoring participatory installations to minimalistic work reflecting on the medium itself. Anything is possible…. Or isn’t it?

In a quest to conceptualise an artwork ‘not possible in virtual life’, the new media artist Sander Veenhof (1973) from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has been studying the fundamental characteristics and limitations of virtual worlds to find out if such an artwork could possible be created. He so far carried out numerous experiments to answer one of the basic relevant question: to what extent does the virtual world actually differs from our physicial world? The difference in dimenional aspect is obvious. Avatars live in a 3D world represented on 2D screens. But we are more and more living our day-to-day 3D lifes on screens too. Video-conferincing with ‘2D’ partners, seeing ourselves GPS-tracked on 2D maps.

To study whether the gap between the real and the virtual dimension is unbridgable, Veenhof carried out a series of experiments attempting to bridge that gap to find out about its possibly unbridgable nature. Experiments involving a connection of both of these worlds. Litteraly, conceptually, by mixing different dimensions or crossing the virtual/real boundary. His projects could be described ad mobility through dimensions. As is best explained by the “Second Life visits The Hague” project: a mapping of a virtual world onto the Google streetmap of the city of The Hague, thereby putting both world in one shared dimension. (http://www.sndrv.nl/tag/ )
Other relevant studies include:

“SL Walkie Talkie Walks” – Hooking up New York residents to virtual world counterparts on a simultaneous walking tour through Brooklyn and Second Life:
http://www.sndrv.nl/slwalkietalkie/

“Physical Virtuality” – Giving avatar residents of a virtual world true physical weight, enabling ‘physical’ encounters between them and real people:
http://sndrv.nl/physicalvirtuality/

In his talk, Veenhof will address the issues he came across moving on the borderline between these connected worlds, a reflection on progress so far and an explanation on conclusions to be drawn.