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Farman, J. (2012) Mobile interface theory: embodied space and locative media. New York; London: Routledge.

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"Working deftly at the intersection of poststructuralism and phenomenology, Jason Farman develops the concept of the 'sensory-inscribed' body to discuss embodiment through and within mobile interfaces.　 Enlivened with personal anecdotes, his accessible and theoretically savvy writing provides essential guidance to the effects that mobile media are having on important contemporary issues, from ethical quandaries to geospatial reconfigurations of social relationships." -N. Katherine Hayles, Professor of Literature, Duke University

"This luminously theorized, beautifully written book provides the first comprehensive account of locative mobile media. Jason Farman offers us a distinctive, philosophically attuned perspective on the great cultural technology of our time-tracing the new relations among bodies, space, and culture." - Gerard Goggin, Professor and Chair, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University Singapore

"Farman's Mobile Interface Theory is the first [book] that focuses completely on theory for mobile media, and, in doing so, provides an excellent foundation for all of us interested in this area of media scholarship." -Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver, in Leonardo Reviews

"Farman's text represents an ambitiously thoughtful and well-written attempt to understand locative media in terms of embodied experience." -Dan Hassoun, University of Minnesota, in The International Journal of Communication

WINNER OF THE 2012 NANCY BAYM ASSOCIATION OF INTERNET RESEARCHERS BOOK AWARD: "[ Mobile Interface Theory] has the potential to inform new scholarship, re-set directions, and remind us that, now, the Internet is not somewhere else, but right here, in our pockets, our minds, our places." -Nancy Baym Annual Book Award (AoIR) Committee

"[ Mobile Interface Theory] would work...well as a foundational text in a course on mobile theories...[and] would likely be of interest to those seeking a richer theoretical understanding of how we experience space and time in an increasingly networked world." - Ryan S. Eanes, University of Oregon, USA

"Given the difficulties involved, Farman's attempt to theorize the mobile world is praiseworthy. With the current balance of theoretical studies and empirical research being skewed in favor of the empirical, Mobile Interface Theory makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of the media world." Radhamany Sooryamoorthy, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in New Media & Society

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Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media

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In this updated second edition, Jason Farman offers a groundbreaking look at how location-aware mobile technologies are radically shifting our sense of identity, community, and place-making practices. Mobile Interface Theory is a foundational book in mobile media studies, with the first edition winning the Book of the Year Award from the Association of Internet Researchers.

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Geospatial Memory: An Introduction. Edited by

Joshua Synenko. Media Theory Journal. Volume 2. Journal 1. 2018

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This special issue, edited by Joshua Synenko, situates memory research within the expanded fields of geography, mapping, GIS and mobile media.

Cover image: Clement Valla (2010-present) Postcard from Google Earth (46Â°42'3.50"N, 120Â°26'28.59"W). Permission from the artist.

Published: 2018-07-16

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Vol 2 No 1 (2018): Geospatial Memory | Media Theory

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This special issue, edited by Joshua Synenko, situates memory research within the expanded fields of geography, mapping, GIS and mobile media. Cover image: Clement Valla (2010-present) Postcard from Google Earth (46Â°42'3.50"N, 120Â°26'28.59"W). Permission from the artist. Published: 2018-07-16

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The Mobile Story
Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies

Edited By Jason Farman

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Table of Contents

Part I. Narrative and Site-Specific Authorship 1. Site-Specificity, Pervasive Computing, and the Reading Interface Jason Farman 2. The Interrelationships of Mobile Storytelling:Merging the Physical and the Digital at a National Historic Site Brett Oppegaard and Dene Grigar 3. Re-narrating the City and Constructing the Self Through Location Adriana de Souza e Silva and Jordan Frith Part II. Design and Practice 4. The Affordances and Constraints of Mobile Locative Narratives Jeff Ritchie 5. Location is Not Compelling (Until it is Haunted) Mark Sample 6. Dancing with Twitter: Mobile Narratives Become Physical Scores Susan Kozel 7. Walking-Talking: Soundscapes, Flâneurs, and the Creation of Mobile Media Narratives John Barber Part III. Space and Mapping 8. Locative Media in the City: Drawing Maps and Telling Stories Didem Ozkul and David Gauntlett 9. Paths of Movement: Negotiating Spatial Narratives Through GSP Tracking Lone Koefoed Hansen 10. On Common Ground: Here as There Paula Levine Part IV. Mobile Games 11. The Geocacher As Placemaker: Remapping Reality Through Location-Based Mobile Gameplay Ben S. Bunting, Jr. 12. Proximity and Alterity: Narratives of City, Self, and Other in the Locative Games of Blast Theory Rowan Wilken 13. Playing Stories on the Worldboard: How Game-Based Storytelling Changes in the World of Mobile Connectivity Bryan Alexander 14. 'I Heard It Faintly Whispering': Non-Locative Transmedia Design and Mobile Technology Marc Ruppel Part V. Narrative Interfaces 15. Narrative Fiction and Mobile Media After the Text-Message Novel Gerard Goggin and Caroline Hamilton 16. Stories of the Mobile: Women, Micronarratives, and Mobile Novels In Japan Larissa Hjorth 17. Telling Their Stories Through iPad Art: Narratives of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities Jennifer Chatsick, Rhonda McEwen, and Anne Zbitnew Part VI. Memory, History, and Community 18. Mobile Media after 9/11: The September 11 Memorial & Museum App Alberto S. Galindo 19. Enhancing Museum Narratives: Tales of Things and UCL's Grant Museum Claire Ross, Mark Carnall, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Claire Warwick, Melissa Terras, and Steven Gray 20. Mobilizing Cities: Alternative Community Storytelling Mark C. Marino

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The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies

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What happens when stories meet mobile media? In this cutting-edge collection, contributors explore digital storytelling in ways that look beyond the desktop to consider how stories can be told through mobile, locative, and pervasive technologies.

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Kalin, J., and Frith, J. (2016). Wearing the city: Memory p(a)laces, smartphones, and the rhetorical invention of embodied space. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 46(3), 222--235

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This article extends research on the production of embodied space by focusing on the relations between place and memory. Beginning with a consideration of how wearable technologies enable new spatial practices within the constructed order of the city, we develop a conceptual framework to understand these spatial practices by returning to the rhetorical art of memory and the building of memory palaces. The art of memory, exemplified by memory palaces, offers a rhetorical resource for understanding how smartphones as wearable technologies may be incorporated-that is, brought into the body, as integral to the production of embodied spatial memories. We argue for the memory-palace builder as an inventive rhetorical (and mobile) figure who not only walks but also wears the city, composing and embedding hybrid memories into and onto hybrid places and, thus, providing a coherent way of being and acting in contemporary urban space.

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Wearing the City: Memory P(a)laces, Smartphones, and the Rhetorical Invention of Embodied Space

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This article extends research on the production of embodied space by focusing on the relations between place and memory. Beginning with a consideration of how wearable technologies enable new spatial practices within the constructed order of the city, we develop a conceptual framework to understand these spatial practices by returning to the rhetorical art of memory and the building of memory palaces.

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Wright, Rewa. From the Bleeding Edge of the Network: Augmented Reality and “The Software Assemblage”. academia.edu.An eye-opening essay relating AR to Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of assemblage.

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From the Bleeding Edge of the Network: Augmented Reality and the 'software assemblage'

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Art deployed using the augmented reality medium is doing so from a micropolitics that distances itself from the uses of these same technologies elsewhere, such as in gaming, advertising, or entertainment paradigms. However, the current terms used to

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Thiel, Tamiko and Pappenheimer Will.  Assemble and Décollage in Virtual Public Space. NMC|Media-N Journal of the New Media Caucus, CAA Conference Edition, Summer 2016.

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Will Pappenheimer

Tamiko Thiel
Independent Artist
After Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Introduction, page 23 (our 're-assembly' in bold):

"There is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation ( the Augmented Reality artwork) and a field of subjectivity (the author). Rather, an assemblage establishes connections between certain multiplicities drawn from each of these orders ..."

Introduction: Augmented Reality art as "software assemblage"

Inspired by the writings of Rewa Wright, "Mobile Augmented Reality Art and the Politics of Re-assembly," this paper expands on her characterization of our augmented reality artwork as "software assemblage." [1] Wright's application of Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage theories analyzes how augmented reality (AR) artworks function as assemblages of process, participant, location and meaning. [2] Though Deleuze and Guattari's work, A Thousand Plateaus, is the foundation of Wright's thesis, this presentation does not follow a careful application of their combined theory, but rather explores how it informs our work. [3]

Wright proposes a specific formation of Deleuze and Guattari's machinic assemblage as "software assemblage," operative in location-based artworks such as mobile AR. This model describes software assemblage as a conjunction or configuration of technologies, media and software that, together with their geographical and social contexts and implications, are actively instantiated by the user/participant at a corporeal and perceptual level. Because these works are participatory, ambulatory and site-based, they emerge out of a fluid experience, configured by us as artists and but only "assembled" in their final form through the agency of viewers on location.

A broad outline of this process includes the notions that mobile AR, as it is perceived through portable media devices, brings together procedural coding, network identity, social connectivity and bodily motions that incorporate the user into the technologies involved, or vice versa, the technologies are incorporated in the user. Inherent in geo-locative AR technology is the assumption that active bodily engagement by the user/participants is required to view virtual objects and media. We liken them to birdwatchers, as they must physically scan the environment with their mobiles to locate the artwork, twisting and turning, looking up and down, walking towards distant artworks to finally stand inside them. Their mobile devices function as handheld virtual magnifying glasses or telescopes, allowing glimpses into previously imperceptible strata. In the process, users of AR must negotiate the shared space with other people, vehicles, furnishings, buildings and spaces, in an encounter with not just the artwork as media but with an assemblage of multiple cultural, social, physical and territorial matrices.

Wright suggests that geo-locative AR artworks, as intervening or juxta-positional imagery, serve as transformative or critical collage and commentary on the multiple contexts that the site inhabits, revealing influences including but not limited to politics of institutional space, contemporary world events and cultural memory. In this already complex assemblage, user/participants are active agents, bringing their own perceptions and contextual references to the multiplicities of allusions composed by the AR artist.
Layers of signs and signifieds at a site are often stratified into hierarchies of importance, with the physical, the written, the official and the real, as determined and controlled by the dominant culture, having precedence over the intangible, invisible, colloquial, minority or subaltern views of history. We however concur with Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomic, non-hierarchical structures that proclaim a level overlapping playing field: where a GPS topology has the same importance as physical geography, where mediation has an equivalent affect to appearance and where software is an integral part of physical bodies and systems. We see AR not as representation or simulation, as virtual versus physical, but rather as action upon or transformation of pre-existing schemes of representation, in order to shift or undermine them. The AR artwork is immaterial but nonetheless real in the dictionary sense of "actually existing or happening, not imaginary," being "fixed, permanent, immovable" with an "objective independent existence" as it can be called up by anyone with the proper hardware and software at any time at that site, as long as the artist chooses to it leave it there. [4]

In the context of Wright's concept of software assemblage, we additionally foreground the artistic strategy of décollage that triggers a transformative, perceptual re-assemblage in the viewer: the tearing away or re-configuration of layers of situational assemblage to reveal meanings more profound than the superficial physical or material layers alone. It is in this sense that our work becomes an interventionist space for critical thought. Virtual augmentation therefore is not utilized to enhance or commodify objects or space, but rather to reveal problematics of public or institutional site and memory. The virtual artwork, integrated into the actual Cartesian environment that claims a specific functional or ideological territory, reveals what is otherwise hidden, functioning not merely as a technological apparition but also as an index of suppressed social objects or strata of allusion.

Shades of Absence, Tamiko Thiel (2011-2013+)

Décollage is utilized as a primary strategy in Tamiko Thiel's series Shades of Absence. [5] Premiering at Manifest.AR's guerilla intervention into the 2011 Venice Biennale, the artwork is a virtual transnational pavilion for censored artists, an interventionist décollage in response to Biennale curator Bice Curiger's interrogation of the inherent nationalism of the Biennale in her question: "If art was a nation what would be written in its constitution?"

In these pavilions of absence, photographs of contemporary artists whose works have been censored are reduced to gold silhouettes and enclosed by terms of censorship. The erased silhouettes, some full bodies, some dismembered heads, allude to the negation of the artists' works and symbolize the countless lesser-known artists facing censorship with no public support. The gold color of the silhouettes alludes to artists' role as transnational producers of high value commodities, and to the 'value' of commercial artworks. Users touch the augment on the screen to view a website listing censorship cases related to the theme of the respective piece, including but not limited to the depicted artists.

In the artwork geo-located in Piazza San Marco, Shades of Absence: Public Voids (2011), the silhouettes reference artists whose public works have been censored (including at the Venice Biennale itself) to perform a critical décollage on the illusory assumption that there is artistic freedom in so-called 'public' space. Warning of the fragility of this freedom, it has been re-sited at numerous public art exhibitions such as DUMBO/Brooklyn Bridge, LA.Replay/Los Angeles and the Virtuale Switzerland.

The silhouettes of dismembered heads in Shades of Absence: Outside Inside (2011) allude to artists threatened with arrest or physical violence. In 2011 the art world, assuming that international fame protected their insiders, stood under shock at the disappearance of Ai Wei Wei. Geo-located with the Biennale's main national pavilions in the Venice Giardini, an ostensibly protected and safe curatorial space, the artwork performs a décollage to strip away illusions of artists as protected "supernational beings" (sic) with license to speak truth to power. The work was re-sited in 2011 at the Kasa Gallery in Not There, an official parallel event to the Istanbul Biennale. In the claustrophobic gallery, a subterranean bank vault in a country infamous for government threats to undesired voices, the (virtual) entrapment of viewers as embodied presence amongst terms of censorship implicated them as participants in an assemblage of power and control.

Shades of Absence: Governing Bodies (2013) was created for the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., with additional sites at the U.S. Capitol Building and the National Endowment for the Arts. Silhouettes of artists censored due to pressure from powerful U.S. government officials reveal conflicts between splendid facades and problematic underlying realities, referencing the Corcoran itself (Robert Mapplethorpe, Paul Cadmus), and the assault on the N.E.A. launched from the Capitol building during the 1990s "Culture Wars," (Andres Serrano, NEA Four). [6] As with the previous works in Shades of Absence, user/participants both instantiate the artwork and incorporate themselves into the software assemblage, scanning spaces of representational architecture to reveal the contentious history beneath the calm, seemingly munificent veneer of a powerful institution.

Skywrite: Will Pappenheimer/Zachary Brady (2011-2015+)

Skywrite, originally created in 2011 by Will Pappenheimer, is a series of large-scale public AR artworks that allow individuals to create virtual sky-written drawings and messages, utilizing the open sky as a site for public commentary. [7] Situated at architectural sites or landmarks, the work functions as site-specific public space address or redress systems, challenging the use and access to the sky above in relationship to meaning and politics of the topology below.

The Skywrite system includes a touch pad web app, created in collaboration with Zachary Brady, that enables participants to draw or write on their mobiles, then to post these as virtual vapor lines in public spaces, hundreds of feet above the viewer. Participants are invited to move around the city-wide works, to look up as a typical bodily gesture and to become part of the project by posting their sentiments. Each of these practices assembles a located work out of overlapping corporeal and incorporeal fields, creating a critical or transformational embodiment within a multivalent space.

The first series, We Need Something, was created for Occupy Wall Street in New York City and consisted of hand-drawn phrases from the movement. This piece was re-situated along the Los Angeles area coast as part of the LA RePlay show during the 2012 College Art Association conference. The artwork democratized and occupied the privileged access to the sky as real estate, and disseminated an urgent citizen-based address sited along picturesque and affluent beach areas.

Signs Over Semiconductors, created for the Zero1 2012 Biennial in San Jose, CA, addressed Silicon Valley isolationism. Participants were invited to write or draw messages and post them over 24 local companies, breaching the topology of inaccessible, dispersed and secretive corporate technology mini-cities. Climate March Skywrite, suggested by organizers for the Peoples' Climate March in New York in 2014, featured texts written by event organizers and marchers. Virtual sky-writing acted as route markers while suggesting an alternative, citizen-based protest messaging.

Sky Petition City, sited in Washington D.C., was inspired by Zhao Liang's 2009 Chinese film Petition, documenting city-sized governmental grievance bureaucracies. Launched at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2013, this version highlights similarities to U.S. governmental paralysis. Participants can draw virtual skywriting above 14 iconic governmental buildings, as 'David' against the 'Goliath' of seemingly unassailable governmental apparatus architecture. Replaced sky-written images are stacked onto the Washington Monument, as an 'office paper stack' for endlessly delayed consideration. As this iteration of Skywrite addresses the U.S. capital, so each variant of Skywrite, as machinic assemblage, 're-assembles' with configurations and influences specific to its sites of performance. The AR artworks high above function as décollage to reveal problematics beneath the surface of the physical, institutional locations.

Biomer Skelters: Thiel & Pappenheimer (2013-2016+)

The bio-sensor driven 'eco-game' Biomer Skelters incorporates participants' proprioceptive bodies into a self-organizing machinic assemblage, transforming them into a 'Johnny Appleseed'-like generative force. [8] As users walk the streets, a simple, wearable bio sensing system polls their heart rates. When the system measures an optimal mind-body state, it plants fantastic augmented reality vegetation, 'greening' the city in their wake.

Participants must choose sides: as defensive Indigenators protecting homeland biomes, or as conquering Exoticators forging alien landscapes of invasive plant biomes propelled by climate change. This terminology is conventional for plants, but applied to humans it becomes racially and politically charged, implicating users as participants in a deeper discussion on disruptions of national borders and forced migrations of peoples.

In Liverpool, a city grown wealthy in the 1700's through the Atlantic slave trade, native plants were confronted with exotic specimens from abolitionist William Roscoe's botanical collection - many from South Africa. For Virtuale Switzerland (2014-2016), in a country with no history of slavery but very restrictive policies for refugees and citizenship, the discourse between beloved natives and strange invasives - again primarily from Africa and Asia - highlights contemporary 'nativist' fears of being overwhelmed by foreign cultures.

In Dubai, native desert plants were confronted with iconic English foxgloves and oaks, touching on its colonial history as a British Trucial State. Dubai, however, a desert where life is only possible in cultivated oases, has a very different relationship to transformational landscapes. Biomer Skelters AR propagation of British native plants, set against Dubai's hyperbolic oil and real-estate boom skyscrapers and man-made islands, were seen as delightfully quixotic exotics rather than as threats to the established order, even while questioning its sustainability and consequences. Additionally, an interesting cultural problematic was that Biomer Skelters sensors, worn intimately on the body, touched taboo subjects when there were gender differences between artist and participant.

Biomer Skelters thus creates an AR software assemblage consisting of participant choice and proprioceptive agency, the artists' insertion of material from the historical and cultural biome of the geolocative site at which it is performed, and the Biomer Skelters system of mobile smartphone device, app code, heartrate monitor, augmented reality server and data. Participants, as the assembling agents of the geo-located work, instantiate a unique re-assemblage in each different path at each different site, in relationship to local botany, topography, cultural histories and issues, in addition to more generalized dialogues with the fields of physiological computing, psycho-geography, global climate change and intercontinental relations.

Summary

Augmented reality, instantiated by participants using mobile devices, can be considered - in Deleuze and Guattari's terms - as an 'AR machine.' Rewa Wright's thesis further posits that AR works, when reinstalled in different locations, are 're-assembled' by each viewer as a matrix of shifting contexts of site, institutional space, contemporaneous culture and cultural memory. Our examples illustrate how AR artworks function as assemblages of process, material, participant, location and meaning. They are fluid manifestations that are the result of motion and process rather than product. Although the virtual layers of the work are configured by the artist, only the active participation of the user assembles the artwork to its final form, as embodied experience instantiated at a specific site.

We suggest that AR artworks function as critical dècollage, as embodied user/participant engagement with and intervention into pre-existing institutional or ideological schemes of representation. Whereas the ability to define 'reality' has always been a privilege of authority and power, the advent of AR art enables artists to reveal the multivalent realities of often suppressed or un-enunciated strata of experience and place, forming an interventionist - and hopefully transformative - assemblage. Décollage in this scenic encounter represents an artistic intervention that reveals resonant or discordant, aesthetic and critical relationships of strata thinly veiled by prevailing or conventional orders of the real.

References:

1. Rewa Wright, "Mobile Augmented Reality Art and the Politics of Re-assembly," ISEA2015 Proceedings, (2015).

2. 'AR' = 'augmented reality.'

3. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, trans. Brian Massumi, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

4. Merriam-Webster Website, "real", http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real (accessed April 1, 2016).

5. "Tamiko Thiel @ Venice Biennial 2011: Shades of Absence" Website, June, 2011, https://manifestarblog.wordpress.com/thiel_venice-2011/. Bice Curiger's questions: http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/archive/54th-exhibition/54iae/. Shades of Absence censored artists website, http://tamikothiel.com/AR/sa/shades-censoredArtists.html (all accessed April 24, 2016).

6. Shades of Absence Website, http://tamikothiel.com/AR/shades-of-absence.html (accessed April 1, 2016).

8. "Skywrite" Websites: "Skywrite AR" 2012, "Signs Over Semiconductors" 2012, "Sky Petition City" 2013, "Climate March" 2014, Will Pappenheimer and Zachary Brady, http://www.willpap-projects.com (accessed April 1, 2016).

9. "Biomer Skelters" Website, Thiel and Pappenheimer, http://biomerskelters.com/ (accessed April 1, 2016)

Bios

Tamiko Thiel is an independent visual artist exploring the interplay of place, space, the body and cultural memory. She is a recognized pioneer in developing the dramatic and poetic capabilities of virtual reality for exploring social and cultural issues. As a founding member of AR artist group Manifest.AR, she participated in their path-breaking augmented reality intervention at MoMA in 2010, and was main curator and organizer of their intervention at the Venice Biennial in 2011. Her work is featured in Whitney curator Christiane Paul's "Digital Art" and Stanford professor Matthew Smith's "The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace." Awards include MacDowell, Rockefeller Cultural Innovation Fund, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Japan Foundation, WIRED, IBM Art and Technology Award, ZeroOne Biennial, FACT Liverpool, Seattle Art Museum. Guest professorships include Carnegie-Mellon, UC San Diego, Bauhaus-University Weimar, University of the Arts Berlin, and Nanyang Technological University Singapore. Email: tamiko@alum.mit.edu, www.tamikothiel.com.

Will Pappenheimer is a Brooklyn based artist working in new media, performance, video and installation with an interest in shifting virtual and physical spatial and object relations, often as a form of institutional or spatial intervention. He is a founding member of the Manifest.AR collective. His work has been shown at Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA, Los Angeles; San Francisco MOMA; Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; FACT, Liverpool, UK; Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair, Istanbul; Fringe Exhibitions in Los Angeles; the ICA, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; New Museum in New York; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington; FILE, Sao Paulo, BR; and Turbulance.org. The artist's works have been reviewed in Christiane Paul's historical editions of "Digital Art," Art in America, New York Times, Hyperallergic.org, WIRED, EL PAIS, Madrid, and Liberation, Paris. He teaches new media at Pace University, New York. Email: willpap@gmail.com, www.willpap-projects.com.

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Assemblage and Décollage in Virtual Public Space

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Will Pappenheimer Tamiko Thiel Independent Artist After Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Introduction, page 23 (our 're-assembly' in bold): "There is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation ( the Augmented Reality artwork) and a field of subjectivity (the author).

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Mark Skawerk. Chapter 1, Augmented Reality and Activism. Augmented Reality Art. From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium. Springer 2014.

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It seems that you're in USA. We have a dedicated site for USA

Springer Series on Cultural Computing

From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium

Editors: Geroimenko, Vladimir (Ed.)

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Explores augmented reality as a novel artistic medium and covers cultural, social, spatial and cognitive facets of augmented reality art

Pioneering book on emerging augmented reality art

Written by a team of world-leading artists, researchers and practitioners from around the globe

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Written by a team of world-renowned artists, researchers and practitioners - all pioneers in using augmented reality based creative works and installations as a new form of art - this is the first book to explore the exciting new field of augmented reality art and its enabling technologies.

As well as investigating augmented reality as a novel artistic medium the book covers cultural, social, spatial and cognitive facets of augmented reality art. Intended as a starting point for exploring this new fascinating area of research and creative practice it will be essential reading not only for artists, researchers and technology developers, but also for students (graduates and undergraduates) and all those interested in emerging augmented reality technology and its current and future applications in art.

Buy this book

eBook 71,68 €

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Digitally watermarked, DRM-free

Included format: EPUB, PDF

ebooks can be used on all reading devices

Immediate eBook download after purchase

Softcover 88,39 €

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Bibliographic Information

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Augmented Reality Art

Book Subtitle

From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium

Editors

Series Title

Springer Series on Cultural Computing

Copyright

2014

Publisher

Springer International Publishing

Copyright Holder

Springer International Publishing Switzerland

eBook ISBN

978-3-319-06203-7

DOI

10.1007/978-3-319-06203-7

Softcover ISBN

978-3-319-38120-6

Series ISSN

2195-9056

Edition Number

1

Number of Pages

XVIII, 314

Number of Illustrations

37 b/w illustrations, 132 illustrations in colour

Topics

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Augmented Reality Art - From an Emerging Technology to a Novel Creative Medium | Vladimir Geroimenko | Springer

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Written by a team of world-renowned artists, researchers and practitioners - all pioneers in using augmented reality based creative works and installations as a new form of art - this is the first book to explore the exciting new field of augmented reality art and its enabling technologies. As...

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Performative VR/XR Designs for Performance 

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Performative VR/XR Designs for Performance 

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Garden Relay (Liminal version), is a post processed performance with plants and data. This artwork started life as a mixed reality performance unfolding in a Sydney garden. I connected an HTC Vive headset to a Leap motion sensor, used as a look through camera, triggering custom software I made in Unity. For the sound design, created with Simon Howden, I connected a MIDI Sprout sensor to a row of bird of paradise and agave plants growing as a community in the soil. The video and audio were then post processed using a range of data automation and compression techniques to achieve the liminal and fluid aesthetic that emerges here.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YibPHly8t3A Garden Relay (Liminal version), is a post processed performance with plants and data. This artwork started life as a mixed reality performance unfolding in a Sydney garden. I connected an HTC Vive headset to a Leap motion sensor, used as a look through camera, triggering custom software I made in Unity.

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Virtually explore Inside Syrian Lives in a fully immersive 360-degree experience.

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Click here to download our study on how VR can help NGOs

Click here to download the transcript of the interview on VR for NGOs

BACKGROUND

VR offers a unique way of teleporting an audience to hard-to-reach places, and offers a whole new way to tell stories beyond the limitation of the screen.

While many think of VR as a tool for entertainment, we believe it can be so much more than a game in a made up world. We believe VR can be about exploring and understanding the real world, and meeting real people. We think of VR as a tool to raise public awareness, and as a unique opportunity to understand complicated social issues, create empathy and feel compassion. The collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council is one example of the deeper meaning and impact that we can transmit through virtual reality.

When the collaboration started, the 360-films were already shot by NRC's communication team. But as NRC got in touch with the SceneThere team about the new capabilities of interactive VR, they decided that turning the 360-videos into an interactive story in VR would be a perfect way of using this material. The films were shot in 4K using the "Insta360 ONE" camera
Combining 2 experiences into one:
One of the challenges was to find a way to naturally combine two refugee camps situated in two different parts of the globe in the same virtual world. But given that the main event where these 360 videos would be showed we were able to make those 360 documentaries was an event situated in a central place of Oslo (Youngstorget), NRC was going to display those documentaries with twelve Samsung headset situated inside a container especially arranged for the occasion.

To make that more real, we added an introduction that could give the possibility to visit the two camps without breaking the narrative line that NRC was excepting for this whole product. In short, the Norwegian Refugee Council gave us the stones that we had to shape and put together.
Outcome
This collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council has been very positive for both of us. We have been growing with a new product and new features and our client have been able to use VR to reach the minds of 1500 young students, and likely been able to change their views on what life in a refugee camp is like for the rest of their lives. They are now suddenly able to relate to the stories they see in TV in a whole new way.

Two version of the product have been made, one in English and the other one in Norwegian. This product is for them the starting point in a totally new strategy of communication. Imagine that in a very close future, volunteers for their NGO will stop you in the street and ask you to be transported into a refugee camp. You are suddenly in front of the poverty that those populations have to face everyday, once the documentary finished will you be able to refuse to help them? Virtual reality represents a new era in the domain of human empathy, at Scenethere we developed the tools and the expertise to make this emotional interaction possible.

WATCH IN VR

NRC's experience is about to launch on Oculus Store in September 2018.

The best way to experience it to download NRC's application from Oculus Store:

Oculus Store: (coming September 2018. Contact us for Beta)

Gallery : Download the SceneThere app and type in the handle "nrc-jordan"

Gallery : Download the SceneThere app and type in the handle "nrc-ethiopia"

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Click here to download our study on how VR can help NGOs Click here to download the transcript of the interview on VR for NGOs VR offers a unique way of teleporting an audience to hard-to-reach places, and offers a whole new way to tell stories beyond the limitation of the screen.

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VR Narratives on migration using scenography 

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VR Narratives on migration using scenography 

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Limbo: A virtual experience of waiting for asylum - Guardian VR - 360 video

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AR(t) Critical Tourism and hidden histories 

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AR(t) Critical Tourism and hidden histories 

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Un viaje por la Barcelona oculta

La Ruta Anarquista, es un proyecto de Realidad Aumentada en plataforma Layar realizado en 2009 para dispositivos iOS y Android, ARoute-Ruta Anarquista es un viaje por la Barcelona oculta que surge de la necesidad de rescatar los hechos olvidados y silenciados que ha dejado el movimiento libertario en Barcelona, también conocida como La Rosa de Fuego. Este proyecto está basado en La Ruta del Anarquismo y El Árbol de la Libertad, de Turismo Táctico que, desde 2012, colabora con Cierto. Innovation Partners. Desde 2011, ARoute-Ruta Anarquista tiene Puntos de Interés en varios países y es de rango internacional. Este proyecto se puede lanzar utilizando la APP M Maturana para iOS y Android (Gratuita).

Cómo lanzar la Ruta del Anarquismo desde la APP M Maturana:

1.- Lanzar la APP M Maturana

2.- Seleccionar AR+ del Menú y picar en la opción Anarchist Route

3.- Picar Open (o si no tienes Layar instalado picar Download).

4.- Si estás en el radio de la Ruta del Anarquismo aparece el mensaje.

5.- Si deseas ampliar el radio de ubicación pica en el Logo de Anarchist Route y selecciona la opción Filters.

6.- También se puede seleccionar la opción Map View para saber cómo llegar a los diferentes puntos. También hay opciones por períodos históricos.

Y ya está! Buena suerte.

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La Ruta Anarquista , es un proyecto de Realidad Aumentada en plataforma Layar realizado en 2009 para dispositivos iOS y Android, ARoute-Ruta Anarquista es un viaje por la Barcelona oculta que surge de la necesidad de rescatar los hechos olvidados y silenciados que ha dejado el movimiento libertario en Barcelona, también conocida como La Rosa de Fuego.

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This project of Art and Technology is based on Mixed Reality technology, and aims to reflect and try different kind of devices to connect people and art. To do that, the project plan is divided in three part:

Understanding the City as an interface: interactivity and participation

The MetaCity as a Museum

Reflections about the mixed experiences at the collective place

Understanding the City as an interface: interactivity and participation
The project start with a research about the production of artists and exhibit places using mixed realities. The idea, is to track what kind of production exist now. Some projects are important to my research, like Streetmuseum, Talking Statues, Google Web Lab, because they reflect about a museum in the city, and the city as an artwork open to people intervention.

The input of the intervention was the images collected in social media about famous places in Vienna and the historic images from the same locations. Mixed in a glitch aesthetic, the output was visible through augmented reality in the original locations, that originated all that data, showing different timeframes of the same city. Each gif would contain some number about the metrics of posts and some error pop-up, part of the proposal of glitches and bugs. The result was an interactive tour to tell the story in non linear way from the recognised collections (old pictures) and the non recognised (peoples posts), crossing the open heritage and the institutionalised heritage, which dispute happens more and more front of the hierarchy dissolution.
​

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This project of Art and Technology is based on Mixed Reality technology, and aims to reflect and try different kind of devices to connect people and art.

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AR(t) Interventions in the public space. Historical 

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AR(t) Interventions in the public space. Historical 

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AR(t) interventions in public space. Real-State Market

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AR(t) interventions in public space. Real-State Market

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NAMAland was an augmented reality smartphone app which makes visible properties in Dublin reportedly owned by NAMA, the National Asset Management Agency.

The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) is a controversial body created by the Irish Government to acquire property development loans from Irish banks in return for government bonds, primarily with a view to improving the availability of credit in the Irish economy. To date it has spent €47 billion and was controversial and divisive from the beginning. NAMAland sought to visualise this one aspect of the Irish financial collapse by overlaying an augmented layer of data on NAMA properties over the physical space of Dublin. This serves to make concrete what has become an abstract account of billions in loans by associating it with real buildings and lands which can be interrogated in real space on any smartphone.

The project is built on an unofficial database of NAMA properties maintained by the NAMAWinelake blog. The database was geotagged and built into an augmented reality cross platform app which worked on IOS and Android. The app takes the phones's position, compares it to the database of NAMA properties and returns the position of nearby NAMA-ed properties. The databse contains about 120 NAMA properties and is updated as required which, as NAMA was exempt from Freedom of Information legislation and guarded its data carefully, was the most comprehensive source of information about NAMA properties.

NAMAland Walks
The project has also included a series of very successful guided walks through NAMAland such as the 'NAMArama' walk with Market Studios and 'In These Troubled Times' with Rua Red which address the issues at the heart of the financial collapse and NAMA. I have also spoken on the project and the role of augmented reality technology as an activist tool of political critique in a variety of forums.

Press
NAMAland has received a lot of attention in the media including a segment on RTE1 New at Nine, more information is available on the NAMAland News page. NAMAland has also popularised the term 'NAMAland' which has entered into general usage when discussing the Irish property bubble.

Visit NAMAland site for more information.

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NAMAland was an augmented reality smartphone app which makes visible properties in Dublin reportedly owned by NAMA, the National Asset Management Agency. The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) is a controversial body created by the Irish Government to acquire property development loans from Irish banks in return for government bonds, primarily with a view to improving the availability of credit in the Irish economy.

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AR(t) interventions in the public space. Protest

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AR(t) interventions in the public space. Protest

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AR Occupy Wall Street is "the world's first global AR protest," placing a layer of protest art over New York's Financial District.

Protesters were not allowed to protest at Wall Street [...] Augments now blanket the entire financial district . Augmented reality gives protesters and the public a global voice.

Mark Skwarek, Author

When Occupy Wall Street activists were prevented from physically protesting onsite, artist Mark Skwarek created AR Occupy Wall Street. He asked people around the world to send in photos and videos of themselves holding protest signs, as well as geolocated 3D models and protest art. Using the Layar app, Skwarek added all of these into one master layer blanketing Wall Street, in which Charging Bull was caged, Chase Bank logos were added to police cruisers, and the New York Stock Exchange became an enormous slot machine. Skwarek also organized an "Augmented Reality Flashmob Protest" at the NYSE, in which people (cautiously) met onsite to view and participate in the virtual protest; by wearing specific markers on their heads, participants appeared in the AR layer masked as George Washington.

Project at a Glance :

Author : Mark Skwarek
Team : Diane Ludin , Elvira Kalviste , Geoffrey Alan Rhodes , John Cleater , John Craig Freeman , Patrick Lichty , Sander Veenhof , Sarah Schoemann , Scott Kildall , Tamiko Thiel , The 4 Gentlemen , The Secret Studio , Todd Margolis , Warren Armstrong , Will Pappenhiemer

Topics : Economics, Protest, social justice
Technologies : Android, iOS, Layar , Mobile, Video, Wordpress
Techniques : 3d modeling, Audio, Augmented reality, co-creation, community generated, Crowdsourcing, Geolocation, Location-based media, Locative, Participatory, Video

powered by_

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AR Occupy Wall Street is "the world's first global AR protest," placing a layer of protest art over New York's Financial District. Protesters were not allowed to protest at Wall Street [...] Augments now blanket the entire financial district . Augmented reality gives protesters and the public a global voice.

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The Concept of Tactical Media

Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This "new media" activism was based on the insight that the long-held distinction between the 'street' (reality) and the 'media' (representation) could no longer be upheld. On the contrary, the media had come to infuse all of society.

For a brief period, approximately from 1993 to 1999, Tactical Media existed as something close to a movement, though some (like video artist and 'camcorder activist' Paul Garrin) would be quick to emphasise that Tactical Media were not so much invented as 'named'. I.e. they were always constituted through and as practice rather than by any formal definition.

What most commentators do agree on, however, is that the Next 5 Minutes festival series (1993 - 2003) was where this naming of 'Tactical Media' took place. And it was in this context in between the second and third edition of the festival that two of its principal organisers and editors, David Garcia and Geert Lovink, wrote a short text that became something most closely approximating a 'manifesto' of Tactical Media: The ABC of Tactical Media.

The question of how to define or understand the concept of Tactical Media remains a slippery one, as it is continuously re-articulated through practice. Tactical Media never was and never aims to become an academic concept or (even worse) an academic discipline. Tactical Media as a concept exists to emphasise not itself, but the (nomadic) practices that constitute it.

In line with this slippery nature of the concept, rather than opting for a singular definition we offer three different takes on the concept of Tactical Media, by Next 5 Minutes co-founder David Garcia, media researcher Michael Dieter, and media theorist and TMF's chief editor Eric Kluitenberg. Though there might be, as the texts assembled in this collection already point out, as many takes on the concept as there are commentaries on it.

So please consider this short collage as an invitation for further exploration (in this collection and beyond) of a concept that somehow seems to retain its vitality under continuously and rapidly changing (media) technological and cultural / political conditions.

[ This introduction is part of the collection 'The Concept of Tactical Media' ]

'Tactical Media': An Overview
David Garcia

" Tactical Media are what happens when the cheap 'do it yourself' media, made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics and expanded forms of distribution (from public access cable to the internet), are exploited by groups and individuals who feel aggrieved by or excluded from the wider culture..."
(Garcia & Lovink, "The ABC of Tactical Media", 1997)

Tactical Media was a movement that combined art, experimental media and political activism. Although it had been present around the world in various forms many years, Tactical Media as a movement was first identified and named as such, by a group of artists, media pirates and theorists in Amsterdam in the 1990s.

Tactical Media took the concepts and techniques of contemporary art and design out of museums and advertising agencies and applied them directly to political protest and campaigns. The key principle of Tactical Media remains to this day, not to set out to describe or explain things but rather to do things. Instead of propositions it dealt in 'media acts', frequently taking the form of hoaxes, hacks and sometimes shocking and provocative media pranks.

The origins of Tactical Media lie deep in the 'quick and dirty' ethos of the camcorder revolution. Many of its early practitioners were media pirates with a DIY aesthetic, who were dissatisfied with the sterility of museums or the pop anthems of MTV. Instead, they sought to re-engage with video's origins in a live medium, whose core aesthetic carried a forensic immediacy and mobility.

As with other Art-into-life movements (such as Situationism, Fluxus and Dada), Tactical Media celebrated the avant-garde principles of freedom, disruption and experimentation. But to these it added a strong belief in the power of electronic media, and the emergent internet, to spread their principles further and wider than ever before. Imagining these as a real possibility became feasible, in large part, because the first cracks had already begun to appear in the monolithic edifice of main-stream media. The movement of Tactical Media made a significant contribution to forcing those cracks to open up wider still...

- - - - -

Written at the occasion of the exhibition series "As If.. / How much of this is fiction - The media artist as trickster", at Framer Framed, Amsterdam, FACT Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool and HEK - House for Electronic Arts, Basel, January - May 2017.

[ Back to the collection 'The Concept of Tactical Media' ]

Tactical Media
Michael Dieter

Introduction

Coined in the 1990s, tactical media (TM) is a form of activism and artistic practice that took shape in the midst of a transition from primarily mass broadcasting environments towards settings increasingly characterized by media convergence and participatory cultures. TM is based fundamentally on the recognition that protest and politics increasingly unfold across mediatized dimensions of everyday life. The term can refer to a broad range of non-commercial interventions, from politically informed artistic projects to aesthetically informed political activism, including practices like hacktivism, culture jamming and subvertising. It is largely transdisciplinary in nature (at times anti-disciplinary), allowing for different combinations or weightings between activism, avant-gardism, scientific inquiry, reportage, amateurism, and critical theory, all according to the issue at hand. Despite being at times declared 'obsolete' or 'outdated,' TM has nevertheless demonstrated considerable vitality as a general conception of oppositional media practices.

Definition

The short essay 'The ABC of Tactical Media' by Geert Lovink and David Garcia (1997) is often taken as a founding statement on TM. Written for the Amsterdam-based Next Five Minutes (N5M) events, the text combines Michel de Certeau's (1980) work on everyday life (tactics as 'art of the weak') with the new potentials enabled by digital consumer technologies ('cheap electronics') to describe an emerging ecology of practices. The piece is worth quoting directly to convey a sense of the language and style at the time,

Tactical media are media of crisis, criticism and opposition. This is both the source [of] their power ('anger is an energy': John Lydon), and also their limitation. their typical heroes are: the activist, Nomadic media warriors, the pranxter, the hacker, the street rapper, the camcorder kamikaze, they are the happy negatives, always in search of an enemy.... Tactical Media are never perfect, always in becoming, performative and pragmatic, involved in a continual process of questioning the premises of the channels they work with.
(Garcia and Lovink, 1997)

While TM can occasionally be exclusively associated with a number of artists such as the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), ®TMark, The Yes Men, the Bureau of Applied Autonomy, or the Electronic Disturbance Theatre (EDT) (among others), the idea gained significant momentum from the general ethos that drove the great diversity of experimentation with the early web, including net.art, electronic civil disobedience and journalistic initiatives such as Indymedia. The N5M events to a certain extent catalyzed these experiments by bringing together independent activists, artists, media practitioners, and theorists in an attempt to define and innovate new styles and approaches.

Within a broader context, historical lineages drawn into TM include alternative publishing, subcultures, feminist independent media, pirate radio and open access television, along with avant-gardist art practice from Situationism to Neoism. More immediate influences included AIDS media activism and hacker scenes, along with documentary films like Andrei Ujeika and Harun Faroki's Videograms of a Revolution (1993) or Brian Springer's Spin (1995) that demonstrated the capacity to intervene with or outright hijack televisual transmissions. Such activities might broadly be characterized as 'creative dark matter', following Gregory Sholette, or the bulk of artistic practice in post-industrial societies that has typically gone unrecognized by official cultural institutions: "makeshift, amateur, informal, unofficial, autonomous, activist, non-institutional, self-organized practices - all work made and circulated in the shadows of the formal art world" (2011: 1). Obviously, documenting these practices gives rise to significant complexities, as apparent in experimental resources like The Tactical Media Files as an evolving or living archive accessible online.

From a theoretical perspective, the link to de Certeau's anthropology of the everyday (1984) provides further insights into the anti-institutional dimensions of TM, especially the notion of tactics as the 'art of the weak', acts of cunning, ruses or tricks played to gain advantage over consolidated structures of power. While De Certeau's work has been utilized for any number of theoretical projects - within traditions of cultural studies, in particular, that place an emphasis on active audiences, resistant or oppositional readings - it is worth highlighting how everyday practices in his account always exceed any 'grid of discipline.' Tactics are, moreover, always accompanied by other nonrepresentational modes of practice, including stubborn, 'hidden' or extensive modes of conduct (Highmore 2006). For TM, these traits speak to performative intercessions that remain irreducible to strategic capture. However, it also reveals how TM is characterized by a complex disjunction from institutional authority. Indeed, it was precisely this tension that represents a shortcoming of TM and has placed the concept itself in question as an approach to progressive political change.

Critiques

Several commentators and theorists have raised questions regarding the expediency of tactics following the configuration of digital and networked technologies into new corporate controlled platforms and services. Moreover, the tightening of state surveillance, along with the long-term destructive consequences of neoliberal economic policies and financial capitalism, has brought about a situation where TM increasingly appears as a futile and inhibited gesture. There have been criticisms that TM is essentially disconnected from actually existing conditions of political struggle, that the rise of social media has fundamentally transformed the landscape of communication technologies, and that, ultimately, the term avoids the more pressing issues of developing sustainable long-term alternatives for the common.

* Disengagement. One central strand of critique has been directed at questioning the connections between TM projects and actually existing political movements. Critics like Gene Ray and Sholette (2008), for instance, have questioned a perceived disconnection between TM practices and conditions of global precarity, from maquiladoras and export processing zones to knowledge-intensive sectors of informational employment and the creative industries. Given such contexts, it has been claimed that TM has entered into conditions of stagnation by being too far removed from these most problematic politico-economic realities. The implication is that TM are at best short-lived spectacles or, at worst, exist to circulate in art and media festival circuits for mainly academic contemplation. This evaluation is driven by a concern with how TM practices are vitally connected to politics; however, it also depends on a particular presumed definition of what TM is, one that additionally might be subject to some revision given recent events and phenomena like WikiLeaks, Anonymous, the Arab Spring, 12-M Movement and Occupy.

* Distraction. TM has been described as ineffective when faced with social media systems dominated by a conjunction of capitalist accumulation with principles of democratic participation, access and deliberation. For a tactical practitioner, media channels are potentially overloaded with user-generated-content that competes with expressions of political antagonism: how does a TM event unfold in conditions of information overload? Even given possibilities for elaborating new techniques for intervention, there remains a nagging question of what tangible gains are made in confrontation with constantly recirculating user-generated-content online. Here, any progressive interventions encounter a dilemma of contending with an attention economy where all manner of creative products and initiatives also appear appropriative, playful and subversive.

* Capture. At the level of infrastructure, the development of mass commercial hosting companies for blogs, online video and social networking raises significant new challenges for TM due to the corporate ownership of these platforms, the intensive capture and mining of data and the preformatted logics of exchange (Stadler 2009). There is, as Lev Manovich (2009) puts it, a curious semi-reversal or interlinking of strategies and tactics that occurs with these web platforms, where the regularities of the strategic can be mapped onto the quantified work of users, while Google or Facebook exhibit all of the variable creativity once associated with the everyday. The stakes for TM, accordingly, might not just depend on navigating vast swaths of amateur and non-professional content, but negotiating the prevailing influence of these corporations: their capricious skill for deploying programs directed at the accumulation of audiences, attention and standing-reserves of data. In this case, theorists such as Tatiana Bazzichelli (2013) have argued that it is time to learn for critical artists and activists not to resist, but learn from disruptive logics of Silicon Valley: in other words, "don't hate the business, become the business."

* Disorganization. From the perspective of organization studies, the incapacity to scale of socio-technical activism has been one significant dimension of criticism. In a conceptual proposal to turn towards the development of organized networks, for instance, Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter (2005) have revisited and questioned TM as a pragmatic approach to progressive political change in conditions of real subsumption or post-Fordist accumulation. Signaling the affinities between this style of working and regimes of flexible labour, this perspective claims that there remains a need to push otherwise short-lived tactical projects into stable institutional forms: a dynamic that might be described as moving toward the strategic by developing prototypes, technical protocols, funding models and new techniques of working.

Futures

Despite critiques of TM, the concept and practice demonstrates an ongoing resilience, especially as tactical practices are translated into a number of challenging new perspectives on contemporary political problems. Such frameworks include interpretations of 'new materialist' agencies, responses to the increasing awareness of the environmental costs of digital affordances, evaluations of infrastructural everyday and regimes of labour, and theories devised following the inventive use of media technologies in the eruption of 21st century political movements.

Formulated at the N5M2 event by Andreas Broeckmann (1996), a unique perspective on media ecologies has become one highly productive slant on TM across more-than-human performative domains. This perspective draws significantly Manuel DeLanda's reading of the machinic phylum - itself imported from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari - and has since been adapted further to topographic descriptions of media power and complex reflections on the environmental dimensions of digital technologies (Fuller 2005). Such perspectives develop through TM, and dovetail with a current interest in logistics as a category missing from the distinction between strategies and tactics (Wark 2002), especially as this draws together standardised infrastructures that facilitates the distribution of resources and labor power in global capitalism. Indeed, reflecting on such techniques for knowledge work in particular - i.e. data structures, procedural manuals, spreadsheets, auditing software, and other 'gray media' - has been a task that Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey (2012) have recently explored as operative constructs or stratagems of so-called evil media.

Finally, the eruption of radical politics and activism marked by the events of the Arab Spring, Take the Square and Occupy have provoked a profound reconsideration of how older modes of public demonstration seemingly neglected by TM are now collectively hybridized through reticulated media and mobile devices (Kluitenberg 2011). These events arguably have ushered through a reimagining and collective reinvention of tactical practices and techniques pioneered in the 1990s, from the prevalence of citizen journalism, electronic civil obedience through DNS attacks or the improper name like Anonymous. Such events, significantly, reveal how tactical modes of doing media politics are being continually reinvented network societies, along with the potential for an immanent postmedia future.

Source:
This short text on the concept of Tactical Media was originally written for the Critical Keywords for the Digital Humanities project at Leuphana University's Center for Digitcal Cultures in Luneburg, 2014.
(no longer available online)

References:

Bazzichelli, T. (2013): Networked Disruption: Rethinking Oppositions in Art,
Hacktivism and the Business of Social Networking, Aarhus: DARC Press.

Broeckmann, A. (1996): 'Tactical Media: Some Points of Departure', Next Five
Minutes, Rotteedam / Amsterdam.

Critical Art Ensemble (2001): Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media
New York: Autonomedia, http://www.critical-art.net/books/digital/

de Certeau, M. (1980): 'On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life', trans.
Fredric Jameson and Carl Lovitt, Social Text (3), pp. 3-43.

Dean, J. (2005): 'Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of
Politics', Cultural Politics 1 (1), pp. 51-74.

Fuller, M. (2005): Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and
Technoculture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Garcia, D. and Lovink, G. (1997): 'The ABC of Tactical Media', Nettime
(1997), http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9705/msg00096.html

Goffey, A. and Fuller, M. (2012): Evil Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kluitenberg, Eric (2011) Legacies of Tactical Media, Amsterdam: Institute of
Network Cultures.

Lovink, G. and Rossiter, N. (2005): 'Dawn of Organised Networks', Fibreculture
Journal (5), http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/lovink_rossiter.html

Manovich, L. (2009): 'The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life', Critical Inquiry (35),
pp. 319-331.

Ray, G. and Sholette, G. (2008): 'Introduction: Whither Tactical Media',
Third Text 22 (5), 519-524.

Sholette, G. (2011), Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise
Culture, London: Pluto Press.

Stalder, F. (2008): '30 Years of Tactical Media', Public Net Base: Non-Stop Future,
http://nonstop-future.org/txt?tid=e16b26b29c7f48f115390ac507917892

Wark, M. 'Strategies for Tactical Media', Real Time 52 (2002),
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/51/6864

[ Back to the collection 'The Concept of Tactical Media' ]

Tactical Media: By Any Media Necessary
Eric Kluitenberg

In their book Digital Resistance, published in 2001, the American artist collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) precede the introduction with a startling image of a man wearing a dark coat and hat, standing in the streets of a major American city, perhaps New York or Chicago. He holds a sign in front of his chest and belly that reads 'By Any Media Necessary'. In the background, on the pointed edge of a building that looks a bit like Manhattan's Flatiron Building, a billboard reads 'Fun and Games and Murder!'. This is odd; after all, murder is neither fun nor a game. A theatre in the background advertises Stir Crazy, which may be the title of a nightly show, or perhaps a description of the entertainment on offer.

Where are we? Is this an entertainment district? Who is this man standing in the street? What does the sign mean? Could it be a reference to Bob Dylan's iconic 1965 music video avant la lettre Subterranean Homesick Blues, shot as part of D. E. Penebaker's cinema verité documentary film Don't Look Back? Was the sign actually on the street, or retroactively pasted in? Where is the medium in this picture? Is it the man as a moving billboard? Or is this a sad outgrowth of capitalist exploitation advertising, which has still not properly been recognised as a crime against humanity? Is it the sign itself? Does the sign compete with the bright advertisements in the background, or does it compete with entirety of the entertainment district?
And what, after all, is the relationship between this image and the idea of 'digital resistance'?

In the introduction, Critical Art Ensemble explain that their book is a reflection on Tactical Media as an emerging 'politicised interdisciplinary practice' that many groups and individuals from around the globe had collectively initiated, mostly through parallel invention. CAE state that the methods needed to actualise this practice are being researched and tested the world over. For a working definition of Tactical Media they refer to the description used in the run-up to the third 'Next 5 Minutes Tactical Media Conference' organised in Amsterdam in 1999:
The term "tactical media" refers to a critical usage and theorisation of media practices that draw on all forms of old and new, both lucid and sophisticated media for achieving a variety of specific non-commercial goals and pushing all kinds of potentially subversive political issues. [11]

Critical Art Ensemble understand Tactical Media first as a form of digital interventionism. However, they do not want to limit the scope of Tactical Media to digital technology: 'By "digital" CAE means that tactical media is about copying, re-combining, and re-presenting, and not that it can only be done with digital technology.' [12] For Critical Art Ensemble the emerging political practice of Tactical Media exists foremost as the appropriation of any kind of medium, any form of knowledge or visual production, and any social or political process, challenging hierarchies and false dichotomies as it goes along.

According to Critical Art Ensemble,Tactical Media is as heterogeneous in its current manifestations as it is in its roots. One can trace these roots back to the historical avant-garde, but in the process of their adaptation and appropriation these roots have been transformed beyond recognition. Most of all, the linkage to the avant-garde has been freed from the weight of its designation as Art, as well as Art's often insular existence within its own circuits of circulation, disconnected from the rest of the social and political body. On the 'media question' Critical Art Ensemble write:
The tactical media practitioner uses any media necessary to meet the demands of the situation. While practitioners may have expertise in a given medium, they do not limit their ventures to the exclusive use of one medium. Whatever media provide the best means for communication and participation in a given situation are the ones that they will use. Specialisation does not predetermine action. This is partly why tactical media lends itself to collective efforts, as there is always a need for a differentiated skill base that is best developed through collaboration. [13]

It is this transversal move, cutting across not only different disciplines and fields of professional practice, but also established hierarchies of knowledge production and their valuation systems, that makes these 'digital' interventions truly political. Access is understood here not simply as access to the means of production, but as access to the very systems that define what counts as knowledge, and how and where value is created. Not surprisingly, Critical Art Ensemble put specific emphasis on the value of amateur practice:
In conjunction, tactical media practitioners support and value amateur practice - both their own and that of others. Amateurs have the ability to see through the dominant paradigms, are freer to recombine elements of paradigms thought long dead, and can apply everyday life experience to their deliberations. Most important, however, amateurs are not invested in institutionalised systems of knowledge production and policy construction, and hence do not have irresistible forces guiding the outcome of their process such as maintaining a place in the funding hierarchy, or maintaining prestige-capital. [14]

Interestingly, these comments seem to foreshadow the intense debate on affective labour that has recently gripped much of critical network theory. While amateur practice might have been seen as a relatively marginal practice, operating largely outside the economic value chain, the situation has shifted dramatically in recent years. The phenomenal rise of self-produced media expressions distributed via the internet has moved these amateur practices from the sidelines to centre stage, through blogs, video blogs or 'vlogs' released via video portal sites such as Vimeo, YouTube and others, and most prominently at this moment, via social networking platforms.
Nobody will dispute the place of amateur practice in the economic value chain of current networked media production these days. While amateur practice still challenges established hierarchies of professional knowledge production, and with that the definition of what constitutes valuable knowledge, it has now become strangely encapsulated by professional market machines and monetising mechanisms. They have successfully commodified the love, amor, at the root of the word 'amateur'. [15]

The second remarkable aspect of Critical Art Ensemble's observations is their deliberate and almost complete denial of strategic professional devices such as 'institutionalised systems of knowledge production', 'policy construction', and 'funding hierarchies' [16]. The critical interdisciplinary practice they envision can exist precisely because it denies all of these institutional mechanisms and reverts back to the amateur's amor, the vital source of energy.

In 1997, media scholar and activist Deedee Halleck arrived at quite the opposite conclusion in regards to this critical interdisciplinary media and political practice, although she does not directly refer to it as Tactical Media. [17] Halleck reflects on a two part television program produced for Paper Tiger TV, documenting the March against the Moguls, held in conjunction with the 1997 'Media and Democracy' congress in New York. This protest march, staged in opposition to the increasing marginalisation of the public broadcast system, highlights the growing awareness that the appropriation of media structure alone is not enough to bring about the desired balance of strategic and countervailing power. Halleck recognises that a sustainable infrastructure for contestational public broadcasting and public access media production is profoundly missing, a realisation that had been curiously absent from other members of the media democracy movement.

Felix Stalder's echoes this observation in his essay 'Thirty Years of Tactical Media', produced for Public Netbase's 2009 book Non Stop Future. Stalder notes that while these tactical projects were geared towards quick interventions that could be realised with low budgets and high ingenuity, they were not geared towards setting up or maintaining long-term infrastructures. According to Stalder, such a short range approach was well-suited to experimental exploration of the new media environment, which was rapidly emerging but still largely unstable. While marginal, these projects played an important role in 'experimentally establishing media practices adapted to the new conditions of open networks'. [18]

While the loose nature of such tactical projects, and the coalitions that supported them, was particularly well-adapted to the rapidly evolving technological and social conditions of global communication networks, globalisation of markets and new forms of global politics, the task of providing sustainable infrastructures for such projects quickly overburdened these networks. Stalder observes that the demise of Tactical Media as a more or less coherent movement was in part due to the absence of consolidation, whether deliberate or not. In his view, however, Tactical Media as a practice continues to flourish, catalysed by the radical dispersal of digital media tools and internet-based distribution infrastructures that have become available to basically 'everybody' in the last five to ten years. Stalder concluded that 'increasingly people were doing tactical media without thinking about Tactical Media.' [19]

Halleck writes about a similar dynamic in the radical video movement she had been part of:
From my vantage point as a participant/observer, there was an assumption by us "video freaks" that authentic radical video would alter the vision of the viewing public, in the way that many of our own heads were changed by our home-grown stashes or dried mushrooms. There was a belief that the revelatory video of Wood- stock consciousness would convince people not to put up with the "vast wasteland" of commercial television, as FCC commissioner Newton Minow pronounced it in 1962. There was no doubt in our own expanded minds that sooner or later everyone would become conscientized. It was only a matter of time before video would change the world. It has, but not quite in the way we envisioned. It is a sign of our naivete, our faith in the power of McLuhanesque aphorisms and perhaps our impatience with boring meetings that most did not spend much time thinking about concrete strategies for changing the world - even that part of the world that most concerned us: media policies. [20]

The hopes placed on the value of amateur practice mirror the failing belief in the efficacy of radical video to restore the balance between civic engagement, media production and democracy, and to challenge the dominant wasteland of commercial television. Tactical Media exists in a far more complex space of coercion and strategic power. Its greatest strength lies in its refusal to become strategic. However, this also denies the efficacy of strategic action. In a truer sense, Tactical Media must always remain tactical, on the move, and on the lookout for opportunities, as French philosopher Michel de Certeau has observed in regards to tactics and the tactician. [21]

Tactical Media: A Non-Movement without a Definition

While a great number of characterisations have been ascribed to Tactical Media, I have so far avoided a definition. It is a recurrent question, even critique of the concept, whose answer remains strangely elusive. Tactical Media never was and has never become a movement. Even though Critical Art Ensemble claims that the act of naming Tactical Media gave it a roughly definite form, wildly heterogeneous and often contradictory characteris- tics are still given to Tactical Media, a number of which have been described above.

This is no reason to despair. There is no true founding manifesto of Tactical Media, no ultimate place of birth, but merely a rather temporary convergence of disparate practices that would in a few years just as easily diverge again. However, one important point of convergence that galvanised the wider adoption and circulation of the term has been the series of Next 5 Minutes festivals and Tactical Media conferences, irregularly organised in Amsterdam four times between 1993 and 2003.22 Significantly, these events have always been collective efforts from a network of local institutions and singular actors acting together as a loose temporary alliance, without a fixed organisational form, let alone an institution.

Within the context of this series of events some of the most important writings about Tactical Media and its principal concerns have appeared. They have proven to be extremely influential in shaping critical thinking about the relationship between media, radical politics, dissident culture, and emerging technologies. The text that comes closest to a Tactical Media manifesto was also written in the context of these events, following the second edition of the Next 5 Minutes in 1996, and before the third edition that would eventually take place in early 1999.

This text, 'The ABC of Tactical Media', written by David Garcia and Geert Lovink in May 1997, provides the most accurate description of what this emerging field of interdisciplinary political practice entails. In the opening sentence of the text, Lovink and Garcia write: " Tactical Media are what happens when the cheap 'do it yourself' media, made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics and expanded forms of distribution (from public access cable to the internet) are exploited by groups and individuals who feel aggrieved by or excluded from the wider culture." [23]

Garcia and Lovink distinguish Tactical Media from other media genres primarily through their participatory character: "Tactical Media do not just report events, as they are never impartial, they always participate and it is this that more than anything separates them from mainstream media."

A specific conjunction of activism, art, media, and technological experimentation has always been a defining characteristic of Tactical Media. Garcia and Lovink point towards this aesthetic moment in Tactical Media practices, identifying it as a media-verité specific to the 1990s: " A distinctive tactical ethic and aesthetic that has emerged, which is culturally influential from MTV through to recent video work made by artists. It began as a quick and dirty aesthetic although it is just another style it (at least in its camcorder form) has come to symbolize a verité for the 90's."

As a convergence of art, media, and politics, this aesthetic moment introduces its own specific poetics. It derives its power not from a disinterested position as an observer, as in the Kantian formula of the aesthetics of beauty, but from its rootedness in contestational politics and dissident lifestyles. David Garcia has observed that from this precarious and complicated position Tactical Media articulates 'a political poetics for the media age'.

Rather than understanding Tactical Media as a preconceived formula, it can now be understood as the result of the availability of new potentialities, and the methods primarily nonprofessional media producers use it to meet their desires. Tactical Media then is regarded as matter of fact, and not as a movement that requires a manifesto or institutional form. Given the deeply sensitive, contradictory and precarious terrain onto which Tactical Media ventures, it is logical that the organisers of the Next 5 Minutes series shied away from any attempt at a final definition, or the creation of a movement with definite shape. Tactical Media was understood mostly as a moment to be seized, after which it would be time to move on, as Geert Lovink has repeatedly asserted. [24]

On 'the tactical' in Tactical Media

The notion of 'the tactical' in Tactical Media is indebted to Michel de Certeau, mentioned earlier, and his influential ideas in The Practice of Everyday Life. The incorporation of dissident or contestational media practices with De Certeau's understanding of the tactical was introduced during the first edition of the Next 5 Minutes in 1993, when the event was still focused on 'tactical' forms of TV making. Bas Raijmakers in particular advanced this connection in the N5M Zapbook, the reader produced in preparation for the first Next 5 Minutes. In his introduction to the book, Raijmakers writes:

" N5M is about the individual media-activists trying to get their message across via public access channels but also about small production companies testing the limits of mainstream tv from the inside, about tv-art projects using television techniques to develop a new kind of poetics, community tv fighting for the right to access and people within big tv institutions developing radical new program concepts. The richness and diversity that all these initiatives bring to the world of television is too often overlooked.
This richness consists of tv-makers as different as New York's Paper Tiger Television, who made "the Gulf Crisis Project", Budapest Black Box who is piling up tapes with recordings of Hungary's main political and cultural events in the Szechenyi Library, Amsterdam's Staats TV Rabotnik who bring to local cable interviews with independent Yugoslavian journalists working under war conditions, Bangkok's Media on Society and Culture who buys a weekly independent half-hour on commercial tv and finally all the people that are in possession of a camcoder, ready to shoot the next "amateur video".
What these tv-makers have in common is a social and cultural position. An important aspect of that position is that they have no fixed institutional or discursive relationship with the world of television. What they do have are tactics; tv-tactics depending on very specific circumstances in space and time. The positions that result from their tactical status give them the freedom to experiment with the medium and to express their own ideas and opinions. Since we feel that this use of tactics is something that cuts straight across the marginal-mainstream dichotomy, we decided to use this word to describe which part of the tv-world caught our interest." [25]

De Certeau is notable for utilising the distinction between 'the tactical' and 'the strategic' to identify a space of agency for the 'weak' in opposition to strategic power. De Certeau remarks that it is a defining characteristic of strategic power that it invariably attempts to claim a space of its own and then to keep it by any means necessary. Those who lack power cannot claim a territory or define a space of their own, but they can operate in the strategic spaces defined by others. Obviously such operations are always temporary incursions. The only way in which the weak can expect to hold such territories, after all, is for them to become strategic brokers of power themselves, at which point they are no longer operating in the tactical mode.

Tactics, de Certeau writes, have no base at their disposal from where they can capitalise on their advantages, prepare their expansions, or secure their independence from circumstances. Instead tactics insinuate themselves into the places of others. They operate on the terrain of strategic power, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety. Whatever gains these tactics win they cannot keep. [26] Therefore, tactics are inevitably nomadic. The space of the tactical is always precarious. This mobility and precariousness is exemplified by the movements of the current squares and the occupy movements, which also show how disadvantaged parties can effectively contest strategic power. This nomadic quality is the simultaneous strength and weakness of the tactical moment.

Tactical Media ecologies

Art historian Andreas Broeckmann offers a slightly different account of Tactical Media practices. Broeckmann mainly refers to the work of Felix Guattari to develop his 'points of departure' in an attempt to pinpoint Tactical Media's elusive character.

Broeckmann references Manuel De Landa's military analysis of the notion of tactics in his book War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. For DeLanda, a War Machine is composed of distinct levels: The hardware of the weapons, its material underpinning, the tactics that integrate men and weapons into formations, the strategy that directs these formations towards political goals, and the logistics that provision the War Machine with agricultural and industrial resources.

Broeckmann feels that borrowing this analysis from a military scenario can 'help us understand at which operative level media tacticians are engaged - whether their cause is the dissident struggle against an oppressor, or the attempt to create a new social form at a juncture of need and possibility.' [27] He then applies De Landa's reading of the War Machine to the Media Machine: " The media ecology is a machine composed of several distinct levels: the levels of media and related tools and instruments; the level of tactics, in which individu- als and media are integrated into formations; the level of strategy, in which the campaigns conducted by those formations acquire a unified political goal; and finally, the level of logistics, of procurement and supply networks, in which media practice is connected to the infrastructural and industrial resources that fuel it." [28]

While such an analysis runs the risk of becoming purely functional, or even utilitarian, a point which Broeckmann readily acknowledges, it nonetheless suggests a crucial space of possibility for Tactical Media practices. Broeckmann argues that " What I regard as crucial for the assessment of tactical media practice as it is be- ing attempted by the Next 5 Minutes, is the realisation that the relative structural weakness of a tactical approach and the absence of a unified political goal among media tacticians has its strengths in the flexibility, in the compatibility with other initiatives, and in the ability to form alliances notwithstanding political and ideological differences." [29]

Broeckmann emphasises an ecological reading of the media environment, particularly of the emerging environment of the internet in 1996. For him, 'ecological' means regarding the media environment as a social space, as well as encompassing the concerns over the sustainability of the media environment, and indeed of the entire planet. Broeckmann writes:

" Media ecology as I understand it describes an interrelated series of material, practical and theoretical trajectories which constitute a 'formation', a stratum, a spatial and temporal machine which is driven by other machines, as much as it helps to drive them. If this definition is accepted, the contentious issue is whether we should use the eco- prefix for something that is unrelated to the natural environ- ment. I believe it is worth recovering a wider meaning of the notion ecology where it denotes not so much the relation between humans, animals and plants and their natural environment, but the knowledgeable engagement with, as Félix Guattari calls them, the three ecological registers, that is the environment, the social relations, and human subjectivity. [30] It has become virtually impossible to think nature without culture: "We have to learn," writes Guattari, "to make our thought traverse the interrelations and mutual influences between eco-systems, the material world, social and individual relations." The critical understanding of the media ecology, which Guattari calls ecosophy, is a way for media activists and artists of enabling themselves to conduct their social and political lives in a considerate and responsible way." [31]

He returns to the idea of a media ecology at the end of his paper, and observes that a 'new regime' for this area has been taking shape in the 1990s. Electronic networks and the internet are particularly influential in opening up a huge field of interaction in which generating, distributing, accessing and deploying information all take on novel forms and trajectories. Broeckmann argues that 'We first need to learn what the structures, the possibilities and the limitations of this new ecology are, in order then to be able to under- stand the agency of information which we are dealing with.'

For Broeckmann the question of how power functions in this 'socio-mediatic environ- ment' is of great importance, as it challenges established understandings of how power is supposed to operate. Broeckmann writes that 'The question now is in how far such power structures are being changed through the formations of the electronic networks, how pow- er concentrations are reconfigured, and how institutions and structures are reorganised.'

Ultimately, the activities of Tactical Media operators in this emerging media ecology should be understood as a subset of attempts to deal with the ecological crisis in a more 'productive and differentiated way' than the indifferent or violent reactions it has mostly invoked. Guattari identifies this crisis as the principal threat not only to human existence on this planet, but also to that of many other species. Across Guattari's three ecological registers, the environment, the social relations, and human subjectivity, technology plays an integral role in intensifying the crisis, but simultaneously constitutes the arena where new solutions must be found.

Source:
Eric Kluitenberg, Legacies of Tactical Media: The Tactics of Occupation - From Tompkins Square to Tahrir, Network Notebook No. 05, Institute of network Cultures, Amsterdam, December 2011, pp. 13-21.
http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/no-05-legacies-of-tactical-media-eric-kluitenberg

Notes:

11 | http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/n5m3/pages/FAQ/faq001.htm
12 | Critical Art Ensemble, 2001, p. 7.
13|Ibid,p.8.
14 | Critical Art Ensemble, 2001, p. 8 - 9.
15 | See also this interview with Amateur Enterprises' CEO, Peter Blegvad: www.believermag.com/issues/200911/?read=interview_blegvad and: www.amateur.org.uk.
16 | See also: Critical Art Ensemble, 2001, Chapter 4, 'Observations on Collective Cultural Action', p. 59 - 73.
17 | Deedee Halleck, 'Putting the Demo Back in Democracy: March Against the Moguls', Afterimage (1998), www.tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp?objectnumber=46407.
18 | Felix Stalder, '30 Years of Tactical Media', in Public Netbase: Non Stop Future New Practices in Art and Media, Novi-Sad and Vienna: New Me- dia Center_kuda.org and World-Information Institute / t0, 2009. Available at: www.tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp?objectnumber=42801.
19 | Stalder, 2009.
20 | Halleck,1998.
21 | Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.
22 | http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/n5m4/about.jsp.html
23 | Garcia and Lovink, 1997.
24 | Geert Lovink, 'Tactical Media, the Second Decade', preface to the Brazilian Submidialogia publication, (October 2005) Sao Paulo, www. tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp?objectnumber=49512.
25 | Bas Raijmakers, 'Introduction' in Amsterdam Cultural Studies (eds) N5M1 Zapbook, Amsterdam: Paradiso,1993. Available at: www.tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp?objectnumber=46490.
26 | De Certeau, 1984, p. xiv.
27 | Andreas Broeckmann, 'Some Points of Departure', introductory essay for the second edition of the Next 5 Minutes Festival of tactical media, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, 1996, www.tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp?objectnumber=37894.
28 | Ibid. 29 | Ibid.
29 | Ibid.
30 | Félix Guattari, Les Trois Écologies, Wien: Passagen Verlag, 1994, p.12. 31 | Broeckmann, 1996.

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Back to the collection 'The Concept of Tactical Media'

Articles

The ABC of Tactical MediaTactical Media are what happens when the cheap 'do it yourself' media, made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics a...

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Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This &quot;new media&quot; activism was based on ...

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Augmented Reality (AR) creates Coexistent Spacial Realities, in which Anything is possible - Anywhere!

The AR Future is without boundaries between the Real and the Virtual. In the AR Future we become the
Media. Freeing the Virtual from a Stagnant Screen we transform Data into physical, Real-Time Space.

The Safety Glass of the Display is shattered and the Physical and Virtual are united in a new In-Between
Space. In this Space is where we choose to Create.

We are breaking down the mysterious Doors of the Impossible! Time and Space died yesterday. We
already live in the Absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent Geolocative Presence.

In the 21st Century, Screens are no longer Borders. Cameras are no longer Memories. With AR the
Virtual augments and enhances the Real, setting the Material World in a dialogue with Space and Time.

In the Age of the Instantaneous Virtual Collective, AR Activists aggravate and relieve the Surface Tension and Osmotic Pressure between the so-called Networked Virtual and the so-called Physical Real.

Now hordes of Networked AR Creatives deploy Viral Virtual Media to overlay, then overwhelm closed
Social Systems lodged in Physical Hierarchies. They create subliminal, aesthetic and political AR
Provocations, triggering Techno-Disturbances in a substratosphere of Online and Offline Experience.

Standing firmly in the Real, we expand the influence of the Virtual, integrating and mapping it onto the
World around us. Objects, banal By-Products, Ghost Imagery and Radical Events will co-exist in our
Private Homes and in our Public Spaces.

With AR we install, revise, permeate, simulate, expose, decorate, crack, infest and unmask Public
Institutions, Identities and Objects previously held by Elite Purveyors of Public and Artistic Policy in the
so-called Physical Real.

The mobile phone and future Visualization Devices are material witness to these Ephemeral Dimensional
Objects, Post-Sculptural Events and Inventive Architectures. We invade Reality with our Viral Virtual
Spirit.

AR is not an Avant-Garde Martial Plan of Displacement, it is an Additive Access Movement that Layers
and Relates and Merges. It embraces all Modalities. Against the Spectacle, the Realized Augmented
Culture introduces Total Participation.

Augmented Reality is a new Form of Art, but it is Anti-Art. It is Primitive, which amplifies its Viral Potency.

It is Bad Painting challenging the definition of Good Painting. It shows up in the Wrong Places. It Takes
the Stage without permission. It is Relational Conceptual Art that Self-Actualizes.

AR Art is Anti-Gravity, it is Hidden and must be Found. It is Unstable and Inconstant. It is Being and
Becoming, Real and Immaterial. It is There and can be Found - if you Seek It.

Endorsed by the founding members of the cyberartist group Manifest.AR, on 25 January 2011:

Mark Skwarek (US), Sander Veenhof (NL), Tamiko Thiel (US,JP,DE), Will Pappenheimer (US), John Craig Freeman (US), Christopher Manzione, (US), and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes (US).

(US), And by: Phoenix Perry (US), Nathan Shafer (US), Warren Armstrong (AU), Damon Loren Baker (US), Patrick Lichty (US), Alan Sondheim (US), Foofwa d'Imobilité (CH), John Cleater (US), Cooper Holoweski (US), Naoko Tosa (JP), Second Front (SL), Caitlin Fisher (US), Helen Pappagiannis (US), Lily & Honglei (US, CN), Joseph Hocking

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Manifest.AR Artist Group AR Art Manifesto

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https://www.g2.com/articles/history-of-augmented-reality

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Believe it or not, augmented reality tech dates back to the 60s.

While it might not have had all of the bells and whistles we've come to expect today, you have to start somewhere, right? In this article, we'll look back on the history of augmented reality to better understand its potential future impact.

Don't have time for the nitty-gritty details?

Over the last 50 years, augmented reality technology has reshaped the way we consume content in the real world.

When was augmented reality invented?

Augmented reality technology was invented in 1968, with Ivan Sutherland's development of the first head-mounted display system. However, the term 'augmented reality' wasn't coined until 1990 by Boeing researcher Tim Caudell.

The technology has come a long way with a growing list of use cases for AR. From NASA simulations to immersive marketing experiences, augmented reality makes tasks easier - and definitely more fun!

Augmented reality in the 60s & 70s

Let's take a look back to see how AR technology was created in the first place.

1968: Ivan Sutherland, a Harvard professor and computer scientist, created the first head-mounted display called 'The Sword of Damocles'.

The user experienced computer-generated graphics that enhanced their sensory perception of the world.

RELATED: Up until this point, VR / AR we're essentially the same concept. In our guide to the history of virtual reality, see how the two split and advance from here.

1974: Myron Kruger, a computer researcher and artist, built a laboratory at the University of Connecticut called 'Videoplace' that was entirely dedicated to artificial reality.

Within these walls, projection and camera technology was used to emit onscreen silhouettes which surrounded users for an interactive experience.

Augmented reality in the 80s & 90s

Now, let's learn how AR transitioned out of the lab and into various industries and business applications.

1990: Tom Caudell, a Boeing researcher, coined the term 'augmented reality'.

1992: Louis Rosenburg, a researcher in the USAF Armstrong's Research Lab, created 'Virtual Fixtures', which was one of the first fully functional augmented reality systems.

The system allowed military personnel to virtually control and guide machinery to perform tasks like training their US Air Force pilots on safer flying practices.

RELATED: This was the first time that physical objects and digital objects interacted with one another - known today was mixed reality.

1994: Julie Martin, a writer and producer, brought augmented reality to the entertainment industry for the first time with the theater production titled Dancing in Cyberspace.

The show featured acrobats dancing alongside projected virtual objects on the physical stage.

1998: Sportsvision broadcasts the first live NFL game with the virtual 1st & Ten graphic system - aka the yellow yard marker. The technology displays a yellow line overlayed on top of the feed to that views can quickly see where the team just advance to to get a first down.

This system is still used today, although admittedly more advanced than it was in the late '90s. Viewers have become accustomed to the yellow line marker and other additional graphics - most don't even know that this is a form of AR technology.

1999: NASA created a hybrid synthetic vision system of their X-38 spacecraft. The system leveraged AR technology to assist in providing better navigation during their test flights.

The augmented reality component displayed map data right on the pilot's screen.

Augmented reality in the 2000s & today

By now, AR has a foothold in the fast-paced tech landscape. Let's see how its eventually rolled out to everyday consumers.

2000: Hirokazu Kato developed an open-source software library called the ARToolKit. This package helps other developers build augmented reality software programs. The library uses video tracking to overlay virtual graphics on top of the real world.

2003: Sportvision enhanced the 1st & Ten graphic to include the feature on the new Skycam system - providing viewers with an aerial shot of the field with graphics overlaid on top of it.

2009: Esquire Magazine used augmented reality in print media for the first time in an attempt to make the pages come alive.

When readers scanned the cover, the augmented reality equipped magazine featured Robert Downey Jr. speaking to readers.

BONUS: In the same year, ARToolKit brought augmented reality to web browsers.

2013: Volkswagen debuted the MARTA app (Mobile Augmented Reality Technical Assistance) which primarily gave technicians step-by-step repair instructions within the service manual.

This adaptation of AR technology was groundbreaking, as it could and would be applied to many different industries to align and streamline processes.

2014: Google unveiled its Google Glass devices, a pair of augmented reality glasses that users could wear for immersive experiences.

Users wore the AR tech and communicated with the Internet via natural language processing commands. With this device, users could access a variety of applications like Google Maps, Google+, Gmail, and more.

2016: Microsoft starts shipping its version of wearable AR technology called the HoloLens, which is more advanced than the Google Glass, but came with a hefty price tag. It's definitely not an everyday type of accessory.

The headset runs on Windows 10 and is essentially a wearable computer. It also allows users to scan their surroundings and create their own AR experiences.

BONUS: Pokemon Go brought augmented reality to the masses in 2016 and changed the way average consumers thought about the emerging technology.

2017: IKEA released its augmented reality app called IKEA Place that changed the retail industry forever.

The app allows customers to virtually preview their home decor options before actually making a purchase.

The future of augmented reality

As we become increasingly dependent on our mobile devices, the adoption of augmented reality technology will begin to rise. AR software advances will be the way forward as the overwhelming majority of consumers have a smartphone and already take it everywhere with them, making it a convenient medium to bring AR to nearly every consumer.

The truth is, augmented reality is already used by everyday consumers - they just don't know it. AR still seems to be misconstrued as too 'high tech' for your average Joe. But, the Snapchat dog filter and others are powered by AR. The biggest shift in augmented reality will have to be how its delivered to change the perception.

This is what our future looks like.

Additionally, augmented reality hardware is still behind the times. That being said, there is a big opportunity for the development of a practical augmented reality headset. Wearable tech is slowly becoming the norm and, as this trend continues, people might be more receptive to AR hardware.

The adoption of AR tech has to start with the software applications to meet the consumer where they currently are.

To infinity and beyond

In order to get a good idea of where augmented reality technology is headed, we have to look back on where it's been. AR was built from the ground up and now is the perfect time for it to take off and soar to new heights.
Extended reality is the way forward in both consumer and business settings. Check out how AR is changing e-commerce!

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A Brief History of Augmented Reality (+Future Trends & Impact)

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Believe it or not, augmented reality tech dates back to the 60s. While it might not have had all of the bells and whistles we've come to expect today, you have to start somewhere, right? In this article, we'll look back on the history of augmented reality to better understand its potential future impact.

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Let's go back to move forward.

Virtual reality is constantly evolving and pushing the boundaries of what we understand about the world around us - and it always has. In this article, we'll briefly cover the major milestones that made this tech what it is today and what we should expect in the coming years.

Here's a quick snapshot:

Virtual reality has come a long way in the last 50 years, but it's still considered an emerging tech. Funny how that works.

When was VR first invented?

Virtual reality technology was invented in 1957 by Morton Heilig. His multimedia device called the Sensorama is considered one of the earliest VR systems. However, the term 'virtual reality' was coined much later in 1987 by researcher Jaron Lanier.

Virtual reality technology has been used in many different industries over the years, from marketing and entertainment to space missions and immersive breaking news.

Virtual reality in the 50s & 60s

Let's look at the early days and how this imaginary technology actually came to fruition.

1957: Morton Heilig, a cinematographer, invented the Sensorama, a theatre cabinet multimedia device that offered viewers an interactive experience.

The device stimulated the users' senses with a viewing screen for sight, oscillating fans for touch, devices that emitted smells, and audio speakers for sound.

1961: Comeau and Bryan, two Philco Corporation engineers, created the first head-mounted display (HMD) called the Headsight. The display had two video screens, one for each eye, as well as a magnetic tracking device.

It was the first motion-tracking device ever created. Headsight was primarily used to move a remote camera allowing a user to look around an environment without physically being there.

1966: Thomas Furness, a military engineer, developed the first flight simulator for the Air Force. This sparked a lot of interest in VR technology and how it could be used for training purposes.

1968: Ivan Sutherland, a Harvard professor and computer scientist, invented the first VR / AR head-mounted display called 'The Sword of Damocles'.

The intimidating contraption was suspended from the ceiling and displayed computer-generated graphics that changed perspective has the user moved around.

Virtual reality in the 70s & 80s

Work in virtual reality research really takes off in these decades and major advancements are made in VR hardware.

1978: Developed by MIT, the Aspen Movie Map used photographs taken from a car in Aspen, Colorado to give viewers what they called a "Surrogate Travel" experience.

It was an interactive first-person view of the city (essentially an early VR version of Google Street View re:2007).

1982: The movie Tron brought the concept of virtual reality to the masses. Geared at gamers, the characters were immersed in a fully virtual environment that simulated a video game.

1986: Furness worked on his Air Force simulation project through the 80s and in the end developed the Visually Coupled Airborne Systems Simulator (VCASS). The system gave pilots a virtual view that streamlined the barrage of information they get every moment.

VCASS led to the invention of The Super Cockpit program that essentially helps pilots make better decisions, faster, with technology like computer-generated 3-D maps, infrared, and radar imagery.

1987: John Lanier, computer scientist, researcher, and artist, coined the term 'virtual reality'. He founded the Visual Programming Lab (VPL) and developed a range of VR gear, including the Dataglove alongside Tom Zimmerman, and the EyePhone HMD - making VPL the first company to sell VR goggles.

Virtual reality in the 90s & 00s

This period has its share of flops but it saw the idea of VR gain tremendous ground in common understanding of technology.

1991: The Virtuality Group released a series of games and arcade machines bringing VR to the general public. Players would wear a pair of virtual reality goggles and play immersive games in real-time.

A few of these devices were even networked together for multi-player virtual gaming experiences.

1991: Sega attempted to bring a similar gaming experience to homes with its console. The company never released the Sega VR headset accessory because developers were comically worried it was too realistic and users would get hurt.

1995: Nintendo Virtual Boy launched as the first portable console that could display 3-D graphics.

It was a flop due to the seemingly expensive price tag of $180, lack of colored graphics, and poor software support.

1997: Georgia Tech and Emory University researchers teamed up to create Virtual Vietnam.

The group used virtual reality to simulate war zones to assist in veterans' exposure therapy sessions treating PTSD.

1999: The Matrix came to theaters and had massive buzz, popularizing the idea of virtual realities with an even bigger portion of the general public.

2001: SAS cube was introduced as the first PC based cubic room. The SAS library eventually led to the Virtools VRPack.

2007: Google, with Immersive Media, announced Street View. The technology launched with imagery for five mapped cities.

The panoramic images were captured from a patented camera mounted on a moving car to show users roads, inside buildings, and more.

Virtual reality today

In the last 10 years, the world of virtual reality has made big improvements, mostly from the tech giant battle that ensued - Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sony, and Samsung all built VR and AR divisions. However, consumers are still on the fence about VR tech as it tends to come with a hefty price tag attached.

2010: Palmer Luckey designed a prototype for what would become the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.

Facebook bought Oculus VR for around $3 billion in 2014, just after the first shipment of kits went out via the Kickstarter campaign - there was a lawsuit filed against Facebook and Oculus for taking company secrets.

2013: Valve corporation found a way to display lag-free VR content and shared it freely with Oculus and other vendors.

Valve and HTC announced their partnership alongside the HTC Vive headset and controllers in 2015 and released the first version in 2016.

2014: Sony unveils Project Morpheus, aka PlayStation VR, for the PlayStation 4 video game console.

The final consumer version released in 2016, encouraging its users to not just play the game, but "live the game".

2015: Google introduces Cardboard, a do-it-yourself stereoscopic viewer where a user places their phone inside a literal piece of Cardboard to wear on your head.

It solved the price tag problem, but is it really a virtual reality headset? That's debatable.

2016: Hundreds of companies were developing virtual reality products. Most of the headsets had dynamic binaural audio, but the haptic interfaces were still lacking.

2018: At the Facebook F8 Developer Conference, Oculus revealed the Half Dome - a headset with a 140-degree field of vision.

The future of virtual reality

So, where do we go from here? Virtual reality continues to find new applications and with the backing of billion-dollar tech companies, you can bet the technology is here to stay. VR Software is advancing just as fast as its compatible hardware is - but that's the biggest opportunity for those in the race.

The competitive environment on the business side should mean good news is coming soon for consumers. Pricing will be key to the consumer market and making the advanced technology an everyday item in our lives.

Right now, VR is mainly seen as a gaming experience but the potential future applications are totally up to the imagination. Mixed reality experiences, or interactive experiences that are part augmented reality and part virtual reality, provide a nice gateway into full VR adoption.

The most tangible future virtual reality predictions include:

AR & VR will merge to create a new type of experience

Advanced virtual social interactions will be introduced

VR interaction will occur through handhelds

VR headsets will slim down to look more like sunglasses

So far, so good

Nearly 50 years ago virtual reality technology didn't even exist. With the big guns now all vying for the market share, the next few years should be interesting to say the least.
Can't get enough? Check out these AR/VR trends from our research team!

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The Very Real History of Virtual Reality (+A Look Ahead)

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Let's go back to move forward. Virtual reality is constantly evolving and pushing the boundaries of what we understand about the world around us - and it always has. In this article, we'll briefly cover the major milestones that made this tech what it is today and what we should expect in the coming years.

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DIGITAL SCENOGRAPHY in URBANISM USING XR Technologies

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DIGITAL SCENOGRAPHY in URBANISM USING XR Technologies