I have been experimenting with "Augmented Reality" techniques and tools recently. Basically, I haven't purchased Google Glass but I do have - via a tablet - the ability to live broadcast my progress out and about the world wirelessly. The first thing I learned is that bandwidth constraints mean the quality of live broadcast drops significantly. So, currently I am investigating the combination of traditional video recording with GPS tracking. I'm using an HTC Titan phone with a GPS Track Recorder app along with a Samsung ATIV table both running windows.
My objective is to create layers from the 'real world' which can then be stitched together with digital assets to create a fusion real-world/information world montage. I am particularly interested in exploring how the animation of time in 3D virtual spaces can be meshed with and interlinked with real world spaces to enable a more meaning enriched fabric for communication.
Lately I've been thinking about how you can take almost any arbitrary 'complex' with sufficient 'tiles' or 'nodes' and use that as a 'paper' or 'fabric' onto which you weave or paint stories. For example, a twenty minute walk could be used as a metaphor for 40 years of one's life at a 30sec:1yr mapping. This then provides a backbone to which - for example - you can map trees in a segment of video to people you might know during that time. The aim of the exercise is to start thinking of ways information can be packed and displayed in non-text based ways. A forest could in a sense represent a community. An ocean can represent the internet. A trail can represent life's way. All arbitrary mappings. But each mapping elicits a distinct perspective on life experience and our shared world.
It doesn't take vision to see the day now when Hollywood won't dominate video media. It is also easy to imagine a time when large companies don't rule digital media in our current feudal ownership model. When the exhaust of our living is naturally recorded in a way that can be woven and spun in different fabrics, a collective story of ourselves should emerge that will be far more interesting than anything we can see or imagine today. So that's why I'm experimenting with augmented reality techniques and tools.
