Augmented Reality

Well, any posting is better than no posting!  So here’s an awesome link for today.  I’ve seen a handful of amazing Augmented Reality (AR) videos online this week that are giving me serious reason to drop everything and pursue AR with my whole heart even though I’ve no idea where to start.  Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve dreamed about having a heads-up display projected onto my glasses [and if you're being honest with yourself you know you've probably dreamed of it too].  So watching this video may make a little part of your brain squeal with glee:

I can’t tell if I’m more excited about the social or technological innovations Augmented Reality technology is going to inspire.  It’s too easy to see marketing campaigns taking advantage of this in a GE Smart Grid / William Gibson Spook Country GPS Art installation way, city-wide promotions with special hidden symbols that reveal prize codes, et cetera.  It’s also easy to see Starbucks and other brick and mortar retail stores unveiling their own apps that’ll tether personal purchasing habits, store accounts, estimated wait times, pastry availability data, et cetera together so you’ll know how far and how long till the next caffeine boost.  That’s all obvious, if depressing, but that’s just the field I work in.  I imagine the utilities for doctors and medical professionals will be stunning and much more useful, and you know the military has already been working on this technology for years for combat purposes.

But I’m interested in the visuals, for better or worse.  And I’m curious if the extremely cluttered visual environments we’re used to navigating every day are going to begin to gradually simplify as more of the data marketers would have us absorb migrates into the ether.  Or what the social consequences will be if the privileged elite are actually privy to a whole other world of interactive information, a common marker of class division made concrete through technology.  You can talk about how the internet is already fulfilling such a role, and people do, but bringing it into the physical world is unquestionably – well, a little bit spooky.

If you’re interested in pursuing AR development (and you know Actionscript 3), you can check out this link for a Flash CS3 toolkit that should get you started.  Of course, I’m no coder – but you might find it useful. Developed in conjunction with the Seattle, Washington based AR Toolworks.  I’m still looking around for more information on AR development, educational programs, and just cool-ass videos.  So if you find any, send them in!  Besides Parson’s program in Design+Technology, which, basically, I’m already going to go to.  It has been decided.

do you need more awesome?

Most people do. So I got this for you (Victoria got this for you):

WPA Posters of the Depression (a flickr set):

Posters created by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression and World War II

Also, Victoria points me to this awesome book. Thank your auntie V, kids.

Happy birthday victoria

Your present, let me show you it.

obligatory post-prandial minipost

The feast, of course, being the experience of seattle.  I haven’t posted over the weekend because I was busy absorbing the excellence of this particular city in the pacific northwest.  Great coffee, great food, great typography (!), and great weather while I was there.  I’ll have to post more about the details this week as I sort everything out in my head and readjust to work-life.  Thanks V, Al, J.

In the meantime I am now reading Michael Chabon’s Maps And Legends, which has a simply amazing cover – or three of them, actually, that layer – but is mostly meditations on books and comics and is really short. [Seattle also has the most impressive library in the world.  And I've been to the library of Alexandria*.  This is better.]

*Not the original, dumbass.

The Breakfast Crew, Murderers

And don’t you fucking forget it.  Also from Vermilyea:

Perfect for your avatars and what-not.  Send me some more art along these lines.

If you build it, they will build it

This is pretty much the future.

Welcome to Shapeways.

• We want to be a fun, inspiring place where you make your own 3D designs come to life using 3D printing.
• You can then keep those 3D printed models for yourself, give them away as a gift or even sell them in the Shapeways Shops.

Craig actually made some pac-man earrings through a service like this, and they look truly legit, if also sort of edibile in a ‘sweethearts candy’ way, which is to say, chalky and probably awful for your digestive tract, let alone your poor colon.  But let’s not talk about that.  Let’s talk about making whatever you want