((PKG)) AUGMENTED REALITY BOOKS
((TRT: 06:52))
((Topic Banner: Breaking The Convention Of Traditional Storytelling))
((Producer/Camera/Editor: Genia Dulot))
((Map: Los Angeles, California))
((Main characters: 1 male))
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Sutu
XR Artist))
Hi, I am Sutu. I am an XR [Extended Reality] Artist and that means everything to do with different digital realities like virtual reality and augmented reality. I’m from Australia and I am living in Los Angeles. And today, we’ll be talking about augmented reality books.
One of the first things that we did was Modern Polaxis.
I put up some street art around the streets in Sydney, Australia. And then we kind of rolled up to these street art works with a projector on the back of a bike and we used the augmented reality app to calibrate the projection onto the street art.
This was in 2013 or something, very early.
((Sutu
XR Artist))
We put this video online and it got a lot of attention. And then we thought, well, what about if we just make a comic book using this character? So, Modern Polaxis became my first augmented reality comic book.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Sutu
XR Artist))
It’s a story of a paranoid time traveler. The book is set out like his own private diary.
You’ll see drawings. You will see lots of crazy writing like a madman’s diary. And then the idea is that you use the augmented reality app to reveal his secret journal.
You’re almost like an investigator. And if you put your phone close to the book, you’ll discover little notes like the text is replaced in the book with some new text in the app. So, the app is telling you a different story to what is printed on the page.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Sutu
XR Artist))
The character is convinced that there is another dimension that’s overlaying our reality. And in this dimension, there are forces that are manipulating us and changing the trajectory of our lives. And so, he is determined to expose these forces. So, the augmented reality is also used to expose these forces.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Sutu
XR Artist))
Here are your bubbles. See, he’s still interested in bubbles. He doesn’t care about the technology. That’s his bubble wand. Yeah, come over here, man. Stelarc, come here. I want to show you something. I’m putting the book here. Look at those little guys jumping around. No, wait. Can’t touch it.
I think augmented reality is a great tool as an extension to traditional book because it has this ability to unlock other layers of narrative.
Chewing on my books.
((Sutu
XR Artist))
As a storyteller and also as an enthusiast of sort of technologies, I like that we can break the convention of traditional storytelling with device like this. Not only we are adding a layer, we’re adding animation, we’re adding audio, changing the text that’s printed on the page. And I like playing around with that aspect of it, you know. I like challenging the reader.
((NATS))
((Sutu
XR Artist))
When I finished Modern Polaxis, I got a lot of emails asking, “How did you create that?” I decided to release a tool to allow people to create their own augmented reality art. And to kick off that tool, I created prosthetic reality.
I invited all these artists that I know around the world to use my tool and to submit their creation, the augmented reality artwork, that resulted in about 45 artists’ work.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Sutu
XR Artist))
Well, the thing I love about the book is all the artists have their own style, and then you get surprised by how they use the app to bring that artwork to life. This was actually this artist’s first animation, which I thought was a fantastic effort.
And then there is the message as well, like what is your artwork even about? Sometimes the artists would just do some fun imagery for art’s sake. Other times artists will try to communicate more important message.
So, this was a friend of mine, Ezra Clayton Daniels. This artwork is probably one of the most powerful in terms of political message. There are African American slaves being auctioned off.
And then you look at it in AR [Augmented Reality], and suddenly we jump to the present, and these are African American men in orange jumpsuits and they are being sent to prison. There’s a lot of discussion in contemporary politics today about the prison system being a modern-day slave labor.
((Sutu
XR Artist))
I thought it was a very clever message, very clever like use of augmented reality to jump a hundred years in time, to point out very literally in a few seconds, this dichotomy of progress.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Sutu
XR Artist))
This is one of the 3D artworks in the book. I think the future for augmented reality books and all augmented reality experiences are going to become more prevalent when we have augmented reality glasses.
((Sutu
XR Artist))
So, I imagine in the future, in the near future, we’ll probably see a, one of those famous launch days at Apple, where they say something like, “This is the new MacBook,” and then they will only put on a pair of glasses, and the world will go, “What? That’s a MacBook?” And it’s suggesting that we would just see the information floating in front of us. And this will be the sort of the tipping point when we enter into like a full augmented reality future.
I think that will happen in the next five years. And all of these experiments that we’ve been doing will become a part of the mainstream culture for how we experience digital art.
((NATS/MUSIC))