READ
EXPLORE
BACK
ADD
By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information.
New York City, U.S.A
From boardrooms to Discord threads, the topic du jour in 2021-2022 was how to engage with the metaverse. Real estate and fashion joined gaming and entertainment as the first wave of true metaverse believers, selling plots in Decentraland and digital avatar accessories like Nike CryptoKicks and MetaBirkins.
In October 2021, the metaverse cup runneth over when Mark Zuckerberg cagily rebranded his prodigious tech company of 17 years from Facebook to Meta. The name change signaled his social networking empire would now pioneer an alternative universe of extended realities. One year later, Meta laid off 11,000 employees and experienced a 70% decrease in stock value. Parallelling Facebook’s decline, bad actors are plaguing the world of crypto with severe market implosions. This is unfortunate news for the metaverse, which thrives on a stable, trustworthy cryptocurrency ecosystem to support its viability.
Aside from the current crypto fallout, let’s review some issues with the metaverse. Headsets remain uncomfortable and expensive. Although users can tolerate the discomfort, most will disengage from their headsets in 20 minutes. Graphics in the metaverse remain clunky and until the tech can mimic superb world building akin to Alex McDowell in Minority Report (2002), consumer adoption is unlikely. Finally, there are bleak reports on the metaverse’s level of energy consumption. But none of this deterred Zuckerberg, as he steadily poured billions of dollars into his meta fever-dream. Some tech blogs speculated that his intent was to surpass Apple, who dominated headlines the previous year with the promise of augmented reality glasses now slated for release in 2024.
As the COVID pandemic becomes a footnote and the fog of isolation is lifted, people yearn more than ever to reengage with each other. Look no further than the irrationally dedicated gaming community, where enthusiasts pay to watch other gamers play live in packed stadiums. Augmented reality — a digital layer on top of our real lives — is the best of both worlds. AR has proven its value for decades in sports and mapping while retail brands like Ikea and Warby Parker have shown us how to upsell. Pokémon Go created a frenzy when it unleashed a worldwide hunt for digital bunnies in strange locales.
So how is this technology faring in the hands of artists? As serial entrepreneur and game designer Kevin Slavin posited in 2011, “Reality is augmented when it feels different, not when it looks different.” Can AR be poetically transformative or bitingly provocative? I share a handful of recent works that point the way forward to a blurry future.
In 2017, Snapchat partnered with Jeff Koons to geotag digital versions of his famous sculptures in prominent parks around the world. Brooklyn-based artist Sebastian Errazuriz took umbrage with the project and worked with CrossLab to create an app that “vandalized” Koon’s virtual Balloon Dog with graffiti. His artistic exercise raised pertinent questions: who owns digital public space? If you deface a virtual artwork, are you punished? Errazuriz perhaps unwittingly made a bland corporate project relevant, ironically giving it a second life with his cocky and clever commentary.
In 2018, the Yugoslavian artist Damjanski created the first of three MoMAR projects, an AR app that reconfigures MoMA galleries to present the work of emerging digital artists. In one fell swoop, he demonstrated the value disparity between physical and digital works, reminded us of curatorial power (who deems what is appropriate for museum walls), and navigated the tension between public and private in museum spaces. And a bonus, the app is built in the open source platform Unity, so other artists can code their own virtual galleries in real museums.
With a big budget and a group of international artists, the Apple AR[T] Walks would have been a knockout if we had experienced the commissioned AR artworks via glasses (reunion tour with Apple Glasses, please!). Back in the summer of 2019 when this project launched, I headed to one of six international Apple stores where I signed up for a one hour time slot. Two trained docents provided me with a pair of headphones and souped-up iPhones. Then, a group of ten traversed through a highly choreographed journey and experienced six outdoor artworks. Nick Cave imbued an aura of superheroism into his stylish soundsuits as they bounced about the park and exploded into infinite particles.
Pipilotti Rist created serpentine rainbows that yelled back to users as they chased the creatures through skyscrapers and plazas. And John Giorno’s simple text-based work was unexpectedly moving. I followed the words to one of his poems along a pathway, as his distinctive voice recited it. The final stanza floated upwards into the sky until the words simply disappeared — “everyone gets lighter, everyone gets lighter, everyone is light.” A couple months after this project debuted, Giorno died at 82. This prescient project provided a rare opportunity for artists to dream untethered to tech restraints. Apple supplied a team of Hollywood special effect engineers, who bent over backwards to invent on behalf of artists’ visions.
Experienced through Microsoft HoloLens, this 2019 AR work pairs fluttering birds with a physical player piano. Conceived by Sarah Meyohas and her collaborators, Dawn Chorus connects musical phrasing with birds’ flocking patterns. An actual Yamaha Disklavier piano sits at the center of a room, while virtual feathered friends morph into watercolor streaks as sound travels around the space. The spare presentation conveys an otherworldliness tinged with melancholy whimsy.
A movement of Black portraiture is sweeping the artworld, and these celebrated gallery artists frequently depict their friends and family in domestic spaces. The team at Kinfolk take a more expansive approach to representation, addressing the lack of monuments depicting Black and Brown people in public spaces. They debuted in 2021 their free AR app (available on iPhone and Android) fostering a user experience of joy and delight. Click on one of 13 current monuments (e.g., Annie Brown Kennedy, Toussaint L’Ouverture or Harry Belafonte) and place their digital likeness anywhere from your dining room table to Central Park. Tap on the statue and a mini history lesson pops up. This AR app will eventually revolutionize the way history is taught in our public schools. Until then, the Mellon Foundation has provided Kinfolk $1.8m to expand their library to 100 monuments.
The Cyberfeminism Index is in its simplest incarnation a sourcebook of 30 years of online activism and net art. Seu conceived the work in 2019 as a thesis project for her Master of Arts degree, and three years later she published the material as a physical book with a companion website. While the book has a table of contents, she confounds expectations of linearity by presenting a performative lecture demonstrating the multiple paths to “read” the 608-page tome via cross referencing, links and annotations. Seu situates herself at a table where she opens her pseudo-encyclopedia and flips through the pages. An overhead camera projects her movements on a large screen. One of the chapters is a series of reference images. Working with artist/developer Tommy Martinez, they built a bespoke AR desktop app in which a crop of an image triggers a corresponding video layered on top of the existing spread. A physical book plays a video while we watch a real person on stage and screen perform a reading. The result is a seamless, magic, mind-fuck. I can’t wait to see Seu’s template adopted by innovative educators and performance artists.
I would be remiss to exclude Acute Art, who has carried the torch, convincing prominent artists to explore AR since 2017. Their roster is impressive, the artwork less so. They have relied on a rudimentary formula: take existing paintings or sculptures and create a digital sticker that one can scale and place in a space. The most successful application is the work by KAWS. He has pushed the boundaries of contemporary art first from the outside and now squarely from the center. From miniature toys to eighteen-foot wood sculptures to fifteen-story inflatables, KAWS has exploited scale masterfully. For twenty years, he’s done the unthinkable in real life, placing his works in far-flung locales or situating them in bizarre situations (i.e., art installations in the Hong Kong Harbor, at the base of Mount Fuji, and in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade). With AR and a press of a button, KAWS’ legion of loyal fans can exhibit his augmented reality works, anywhere and everywhere, bestowing him world domination in the digital public sphere.
