artist interpretations of AR

Any new technology that captures the attention of artists is often of interest to me... these folks can usually be divided up into 2 categories, the technofiles and the distopians... Surprise... I'm mostly drawn to the distopians...

When technologies are new though, it's hard to tell the difference between the two camps as the newness of the technology can simply dazzle us into amazement... One artist I have recently been digging is the video and design artist Keiichi Matsuda. Here's an example of his work... This piece is called "Augmented (hyper) Reality: Domestic Robocop".

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Really beautiful work... When I show students, they are blown away... Their first question is "Is that real?" I always have to laugh. I say of course it's real, it's a video by Keiichi Matsuda. What I'd like to mention about this example is that it looks possible, that it could be the future... it's a bit over the top, but why shouldn't it be... Artists can and should hit us over the head occasionally so we are blown away... Otherwise, we may never think about the future before it's upon us and we're trying to remember why we got that chip put in our head in the first place.

Here's a link to Matsuda's website: http://keiichimatsuda.com/

Here's another example of his AR work The Pusher:

The Pusher / The Entertainment from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.