Augmented reality graffiti and street art
Date
2022
Authors
Gwilt, I.
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Geroimenko, V.
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Book chapter
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Source details - Title: Augmented reality art: from an emerging technology to a novel creative medium, 2022 / Geroimenko, V. (ed./s), Ch.15, pp.283-295
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Abstract
Despite being a relatively new technique, the essential principles behind Augmented Reality graffiti (AR graffiti) and street art simply reflect updated iterations of decades-old processes. As with so-called traditional forms of urban augmentation, AR graffiti generates new connections between a viewer and their immediate surroundings, allowing and encouraging the latter to be re-interpreted and reimagined as spaces other than those they were prior to the encounter and potentially transforming what Marc Augé describes as urban ‘non-places’ into more personally inscribed and inhabited environments. Where AR graffiti differs significantly from other, similar forms of street augmentation is the ability to add to these environments through digital channels, thereby creating frisson between its digital content and its ‘analog’ environmental and spatial counterpart.
This chapter examines the artistic, formal, social and philosophical intersections generated by AR graffiti and street art: the ways by which a digital interface allows us to experience art and urban environments in drastically different ways and the social and spatial implications that come with such experiences. These intersections are further explored through analysis of two case studies. In addition, two more recent examples are included to assess how AR graffiti has altered in the intervening years since this chapter was first published. What these examples of AR graffiti and street art demonstrate is a renewed analysis of relationships between art, image and environment: In what ways does graffiti and street art facilitate a new or deeper understanding of urban spaces?
This updated chapter furthers the idea that although graffiti and street art produced through AR technologies are comparatively benign (to the environment), like other street artists those using AR are required to work closely with the inherent properties of physical spaces and the attendant spatial and social factors attached to them. Unlike more traditional forms, however, AR graffiti can utilize the expanded potential inherent to digital technologies to reveal a range of new stories or facilitate alternate readings of urban spatial experiences, alongside the experience of ‘traditional’ graffiti and street art.
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Copyright 2022 Springer International Publishing AG