Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972

Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities is the cornerstone of much modern speculation about urban living and architecture. This session draws together four transmediale projects that use wireless technologies, augmented realities and mapping tools to reveal the undisclosed topologies of Berlin.

Moderator: Verena Kuni (de) Participants: Julian Oliver (nz), Martin Howse (uk), Oswald Berthold (de), Danja Vasiliev (de/ru), Adam Somlai-Fischer (hu) & Bengt Sjölén (se), Julius von Bismarck (de)

Layar is a Reality Browser, which means it displays real time digital meta data on top of the physical world around you, as seen through the camera of your mobile phone. Point the camera anywhere, and you'll see layers of information on top of real world objects ... - via Mashable

Don´ t get lost in augmented reality: unlike content is now available on Layar.

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.

Arphid Watch: Immaterials, the Ghost in the Field

http://www.nearfield.org/2009/10/immaterials-the-ghost-in-the-field

This video is about exploring the spatial qualities of RFID, visualised through an RFID probe, long exposure photography and animation. It features Timo Arnall of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG.

The problem and opportunity of invisibility

RFID is still badly understood as an interactive technology. Many aspects of RFID interaction are fundamentally invisible; as users we experience two objects communicating through the 'magic' of radio waves. This invisibility is also key to the controversial aspects of RFID technology; once RFID antennas are hidden inside products or in environments, they can be invoked or initiated without explicit knowledge or permission. (See here for more on the invisibility of radio.)

But invisibility also offers opportunities: the lack of touch is an enormous usability and efficiency leap for many systems we interact with everyday (hence the success of Oyster, Suica and Octopus cards). But there is also the 'magic' of nearness one of the most compelling experiential aspects of RFID.

As designers we took this invisibility as a challenge. We needed to know more about the way that RFID technology inhabits space so that we could better understand the kinds of interactions that can be built with it and the ways it can be used effectively and playfully inside physical products.

The experiments

In order to study the readable volume around an RFID reader, we built experimental probes that would flash an LED light when they successfully read an RFID tag. ...

from Beyond the Beyond by Bruce Sterling

Posted via web from Phreak 2.0 mounted lifestream

*Now that's projection mapping, eh? Into some "augmented surreality" territory here.

*Makes you wonder if there could be whole techno styles of augmentation, like "gabba augmentation," "trance augmentation" or "augmented glitchcore."

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo.

Yesterday we showed you an iPhone application that overlays indicators pointing to the nearest London Tube stations upon the phone's video field of view. TwittARound, a new augmented reality app from German developer Michael Zoellner, works in the exact same way--utilizing the iPhone 3Gs' integrated compass in conjunction with GPS and video data to mix data with what we see. TwittARound provides a 360 degree view of tweets made in the vicinity, so that, ideally, they could act as "post-it notes for the world," as Wired's Charlie Sorrel puts it--you could not only see a tweet regarding a great sandwich at a newly opened joint, but a marker by the place itself. Location-enabled tweets are nothing new, however, and a cursory sampling casts doubt on whether TwittARound has anywhere near as much functionality as the admittedly very cool visuals.

Scanning a one mile radius of PSFK's SoHo office, we find the following tweets:

Ahhhhhhhh.... My nerves...Breathe Neek... Breathe*

Whiffle ball has been canceled. The other team forfeited so we win!!! That gives us 2 wins and 3 loses overall this season so far.

My patience has been tested atleast 15 times today and u know wat I did..I brushed the negative energy off and smiled :-)

While the utility of an augmented reality app that points to the nearest subway stop, or the nearest ATMs, or could display the locations of your friends would be hard to dispute, are we really gaining anything from knowledge that a mediocre whiffle ball team lies to our south east? Augmented reality will garner easy attention now and for the immediate future because of its visual appeal--but developers would be wise to reflect on what exactly they are augmenting our reality with.

[via Gadget Lab]

By Sam Biddle | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Electronics & Gadgets, Gaming & Social Networks and app, augmented reality, iphone, Tweet, Twitter