"Talk to Me"- Response to Artists

Sander Veenhof's Agmented Reality Projects 

Many of these are collaborations but Veenhof deals with the augmented reality part. 

FrustrartAR
Augmented Reality Sharks (based off GPS)
Virtual Sculpting
Mind the Fish

My first experience with augmented reality was within the consumer realm. The Nintendo 3DS has a 3D augmented reality function, but it's only really there so Nintendo can say it's there. Beyond a few minigames that are amusing for maybe 45 minutes if your eyes can stand the visual disorientation that comes with AR, it's not much beyond a demo of greater things to come with the technology.

I had not considered AR in terms of it's "art" potential, but whoa buddy does it ever have some! I like most of these projects because they riff on pop culture and are humorous (FrustratAR is a really funny concept in particular) but the potential of AR as it becomes more and more powerful are amazing. I like how the "Virtual Sculpting" video shows users playing with the AR art program in the middle of a Fine Arts gallery in New York. Instead of considering the art on display, people play with virtual blocks that actually occupy a neighboring space (the video of reality being played back on the phone plus the augmented objects) and obscure the gallery works! I love "naughty" art like that, works the interrupt the usual flow of a gallery space and push for a more active involvement in artwork. AR is absolutely perfect for that.

Crispin Jones makes cool things

A lot of it is tad commercial but i'll talk about it anyway.

PC for poets

Tengu!

Katazukue

Here we see an artist that wants to bring the emotional connections we have with our devices to the stand. It reminds me a lot of our "soft rains" reading- these machines are kinda-sorta alive; continuing to work without us, yet without purpose when we are gone. Something like "Tengu" is a pretty obvious materialization of out interest in our machines "feelings" and is pretty much a physical Tamgotchi. But Katazuke is really intriguing to me because it touches the exact never I want to hit in my projects about technology and how it changes our lives: "On another level the piece is intended as a metaphor for technology generally - technology both gives us something as well as taking something away from us. For example the mobile phone allows us to speak to anyone at any time, but perversely makes us less attentive to the space we are physically in."

Wow, thats like, literally how I feel about technology... conflicted. Our machines are moved by us but move us, too. It's really important to pay attention to that... I love something like "Katazukue" because it forces you to pay more attention to how your being controlled by objects that you perceive as being sources of power for yourself, and ignore the power the objects demand from you in return.

Dunne & Raby

Designers who work with machine/human interaction.

TECHNOLOGICAL DREAMS SERIES
The website

These artists make a wide variety of technological artworks, but what caught my eye (and what is in MoMA) are weird little robots that react to human presence. Robots may be beyond our capability in this class, but they are still a machine that relies on human interaction to matter- at least the kind without sophisticated AI, that is. The robots have "personality" and react differently to people- some seem to scuttle away, other rely on people. Personification is a indeed powerful concept, and it does not really benefit the robots but the people interacting with them. The uncanny valley yawns deeply once again.

I also enjoyed "DO YOU WANT TO REPLACE THE EXISTING NORMAL?" a work that anticipates a "utopia" where technology tends to our most neurotic needs 24/7, monitoring place and person all the time (from sexual arousal to political stability). Such a vision is creepy to me and probably to you, but the way we live would certainly disturb someone from the middle ages. Is utopia possible if people need machines to regulate their worries? 

 I had fun looking at these artists, and I very intrigued by art that uses human/machine interactions as it's cornerstone. The way we interact with technology reveals much more about us than the technolgy, to be sure!