The art of the unseen

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 of affairs even more wild!


Merriam Webster says this about the word augment:

“to make greater, more numerous, larger, or more intense”

Merriam goes on to provide a list of synonyms:

“accelerate, add (to), aggrandize, amplify, boost, build up, compound, enlarge, escalate, expand, extend, hype, increase, multiply, pump up, raise, stoke, supersize, swell up”

I’m just going to extract one or two from that list:

Amplify – Enlarge – Expand – Extend – Increase

We are expanding reality…increasing its boundaries with the unseen, the liminal. We are not just practitioners, coders, artists, we are witches and wizards and our incantations begin with http. Our scrying tools are phones. Publishing to GitHub is our alchemy, the letters fall in their order and our conjurations, our illusions can be seen. We can add content to the world that nobody else can see, unless of course they activate the 'spell'.

“Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words, or images, to achieve changes in consciousness.” Alan Moore

Full quote

I must point out in many respects Augmented Reality is currently a very exclusionary experience, it relies almost completely on sight right now and technology. But if we can forgive what are possibly the limits of its infancy, practitioners can create portals to other worlds that occupy a new 3D.

Here is my current section of the application (still at the time of publishing this post, subject to changes):

"The augmented work will sit in the middle, occupying a liminal space between real and unreal, like the viewer, on a cusp. This liminality reflects the otherworldliness and often comical nature of our existence, our hopes, our dreams, our emotional reflections, the fleeting moments compared to the vastness of the infinite.

The digital piece hangs in the air, defying gravity, an absurd contradiction, a huge chunk of gently rotating concrete informed by the designs of contemporary tetrapods. The strength inherent in the tetrapod is an attempt by humanity to control the forces of nature, to break the power of the crushing waves and stand proud on the reclaimed spaces. Perhaps a metaphor for our desire to overcome death? But inevitably all changes, nature and time will win out in the end. Is our piece therefore a ghost? A foreshadowing? Or more? Does it in fact stand there breaking the unseen waves of negativity like a long-lost spell or runic protection for the space, that via our devices we're being gifted a lens through which it can be glimpsed? "

If you’ve still no concept of what I’m on about with this stream of words talking about Augmented Reality and portals… then let’s have a look at the work of Artist Jason Wilsher-Mills:

https://twitter.com/JASONWILSHERMIL/status/1280051556226924544

Here's a still from the video available on his Twitter page.



I defy you to tell me that’s not otherworldly or magical, a portal to the unseen, a trans-space. Sure we might argue about its spirituality, perhaps this space is not the realm of some *real* godhead, not imbued with special forces, but it’s not devoid of symbolism, meaning and the opportunity to develop and grow an understanding. It’s very much a reflection of the without and the within.

For the demo Jason has placed his meaningful space within the ordinary dull space of a car park, Jason has created a literal portal through which we as viewers can go and be enveloped, we can be participants. It’s anarchic and liberating.

I’ll draw this post to a long comma rather than a full stop now, as we inhale a cool crisp breath of the more technical. If Jason’s work were to be viewable by Hololens for example, this is a significantly more immersive experience than just holding up the small screen of a phone or tablet to bear witness. With glasses based AR the content they display can be all encompassing, such devices are a large step forwards towards total immersion/presence. Towards breaking through to the other side unencumbered.

A hat tip to Jason Wilsher-Mills, to Alan Moore and to those who are trying to make AR more accessible like Nicolò Carpignoli and the AR.js studio project: https://ar-js-org.github.io/studio/