Augmented Reality's future possibilities...

Since posting the links yesterday to Blaise Aguera y Arcas' augmented reality demo in Google Maps & the ThinkAnApp QR code tattoo, I’ve been mulling on the kinds of interactivity these innovations make possible. The live streaming video embedded in Google Street View clearly opens up all kinds of play with telepresence and there are numerous projects experimenting with this. One recent series is Faisal Anwar’s Odd Spaces installation which is currently up in Vancouver during the Olympics and links the Vancouver site with sites in Pakistan & Bangladesh through real time video.

 

The augmented reality tattoo opens up a wild new arena of play - I started imagining spaces with large scale screens & multiple web cams that could pick up the QR codes on people’s clothes, accessories, tattoos, revealing augmented elements - maybe a re-skinning via a mask/clothes, appendages? attendant creatures like the mini dragon? & what if those augmented reality elements could interact?  

 

What if this was happening in clubs? what if these were gatherings of fans who could interact & participate in transmedia world-building extensions in entirely new ways? What if gamers could ‘play’ with each other in real time in augmented environments? Wii is half way there already. What if you could customize your QR codes to surprise your friends? And the erotic possibilities are pretty trippy as well. I leave that to your imaginations....

 

My bet is that multiple people are working on this already and while I wouldn’t get a QR code tattoo because you know it would end up being sooooo 2012, I would play with temporary ones