Travels in augmented reality

This article describes several artistic projects using the medium of augmented reality and gives a technical outline of how it works and its developing nature.

Some of the works were completely original, created specifically with the available functionality of augmented reality in mind. Others were adaptations of previous artworks, creating new challenges and opportunities in the change of medium.

Digital content permeates through the modern world, but the use of augmented–reality technologies allows meaningful connections to be made between digital content and real-world locations. Simulated artefacts can be embedded within real-world space, creating a live montage. Similar examples, of a less technological nature, can be found throughout modern history - variously described as tricks to fool observers or tools to enhance artistry, from apparitions in stage productions to mainstays of early cinema. A fundamental theme explored in this article is the artistic status of augmented reality. Is it a transitory fad, or an emerging platform? Does it matter which?

The artworks described vary from being placed at specific locations in public areas, being detached from place and available everywhere, to incorporation in traditional and non-traditional gallery spaces. Spectres of jazz migrants reinhabited venues that were meaningful in their lives, and an invisible artist offered a cynical tour of London's contemporary galleries. In response to the recent financial crisis, members of the public were invited to show wrath or mercy to a host of characters. A selection of the renowned painter Joseph Wright's works were augmented with images of contemporaneous ceramics in order to interrogate their divergent themes. The most recent work lifts characters from prints, and allowed them to inhabit the surrounding environment of Dr Freud's London house.