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Dear ChatGPT "Examine the virtual spaces offered by Extended Reality such as Augmented Reality, through an Anarchist lens"

Extended reality technologies such as augmented reality (AR) offer new possibilities for creating and experiencing virtual spaces. Anarchism, as a political philosophy, emphasizes the importance of autonomy, decentralization, and direct action, which can be used as a lens to examine the potential benefits and drawbacks of AR virtual spaces. AR virtual spaces can be seen as consistent with anarchist values in that they allow for decentralized creation and use of these spaces. With the use of AR, individuals can create and experience virtual spaces without relying on centralized control, as the technology enables individuals to overlay digital content onto the physical world. This decentralization allows for greater autonomy and individual creativity, which aligns with anarchist values. AR virtual spaces also have the potential to be used for direct action, as they can be used to create and share information, coordinate actions, and raise awareness about political issues. For example, AR...
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Short interview with artist David Blandy

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In Fine Art, there's a rich heritage of sympathetic engagement with cutting edge software and technology and I love this corner of the art world*! In this short post I'm publishing an online interview with Artist David Blandy who uses games and Machinema. ID: What drew you to using game engines? DB: I like to subvert systems from within. So when talking about the virtual self it makes the most sense to use the virtual spaces I’m most familiar with as a location. In the Finding Fanon works the world of Grand Theft Auto 5 becomes a found object, an arena to house the journey of our two avatars as they search for Fanon’s lost plays. In Backgrounds the backgrounds from fighting games such as Streetfighter Alpha and King of Fighters 98 become a place for my father, a landscape painter, to enter the landscapes of my screen life. It was natural to use game engines, as they’re one of the places that I live, the site of everyday virtuality, with their own ...
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The art of the unseen

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I’ve been co-writing an application with art group Napolean III based in Yorkshire. The opportunity if we’re successful will deliver a piece of work in Yorkshire Sculpture Park and to say I’m excited by the prospect is a definite understatement. For my part, I will be creating some Augmented Reality art which will sit in the ‘middle’ of our proposed piece. As I write about the work it’s hard not to describe it in more esoterical terms, try as I might to put a more pragmatic slant on it, this type of work currently defies a more conventional labelling and framework. Augmented Reality itself is a term which needs some playful expansion. Technically it refers to adding digital content to the real world which can only be viewed by an app on a tablet, smartphone or by a headset such as Microsoft's Hololens . But let’s look at that term again… Augmented Reality, we could be here all week just riffing on what is reality, but now we have another way of making this already bizarre state ...
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WebAR - here and how - part 1

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WebAR is here In my first post on this blog in Oct 2019, I proposed that when an open source platform arrived that could support GEO Location for AR, it would be a game changer in many ways. " The young generations of digital natives who are used to this technology will be the guerilla artists of tomorrow. AR/MR platforms will continue to spring up becoming open source and content rich. Tech savvy kids and artists will add their own content and put it ANYWHERE. As geo-location becomes more accurate and remote, they'll be able to do this without even leaving home, having just the coordinates of the display destination at their disposal ." Well...it's here AR.js Studio   This stunningly generous piece of open source software comes from a team across the world but headed up in Italy by Nicolò Carpignoli from Chialab. What does this mean for us as artists?  It means we're free to play with the real world! It means that we don...
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The ARt Gallery

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Killing the gallery The argument that mode of art (x) or delivery method (y) will be the end of the gallery or museum space has been offered before and will no doubt be served up on a bed of clutched straws again in the future.  Whilst it may well be the bold vision of innovative artists to escape, ignore or twist these sacred spaces, galleries have so far been quite dynamic and resilient. They have successfully absorbed these attempts, re-framed them or survived without them. "Most street artists claim that they make art on the street to avoid the market-driven, institutionalized, mainstream economy of the gallery system." (Abrams, L. 2018) Galleries (and museums) remain dominant cultural dictators because they have the power to control the dialogue/branding within their walls and consequently, within the wider culture. However, these art temples are not inviolate. In this short post I'm offering the idea that Augmented and Mixed reality (soon to be in greater combinati...
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