Augmented Reality and the Reappropriation of Public Space

The AR AD Takeover project came out of a discussion between myself and BC Bierman. A paper has finalized that discussion and created an academic framework around which the project can be understood. Please take a look at it if the abstract below is of interest.

Abstract:

This project employs augmented reality (AR) technology to layer urban centers with artistic content in the virtual world. Specifically, the Takeover is an AR deployment that uses street level phone booth ads and billboards to trigger a citywide curated art installation that displays on Android and Iphone mobile devices. This project showcases street artists whose work has historically addressed commercial advertising in public space. This project examines how civic authorities allow certain private parties to profit while preventing or discouraging other forms of public media production. It is with a certain sense of ironic playfulness that we utilize technology to create a kind of hypAR-reality, which implodes the distinction between the physical and the digital, to make evident the consumptive hyper-reality created by commercial advertising. We hope to problematize the top-down hierarchy of the traditional advertising model and pave the way for a more democratic, relativistic model that opens up a meaningful discourse between commercial advertisers and the public. This project is premised on the idea that capitalism - simply by pursuing its natural operational processes - possesses inherent problems of defining the ideal citizen and creating incentives for the exchange of valuable ideas. Conceived in response to this flaw in the system, we designed the AR | AD Takeover as preliminary step in the evolution of the messaging in public space from being predominantly commercial to a more democratic, open environment.

Full Paper [HERE]