Last month Mural Arts Philadelphia unveiled their first augmented reality mural, “Dreams, Diaspora, and Destiny.”
Just like with my post last week about actors being preserved digitally for eternity, I wondered about the implications of this technology.
While the physical mural has permanence, there is a lot that can be done with augmented reality to either enhance or degrade the experience of any work of art or physical location without the permission or awareness of creators/owners/caretakers.
But beyond that, I thought the capacity to do this sort of thing was pretty cool. In the process of trying to find additional video depicting the augmented reality experience of the Philadelphia mural (I never did) I came across a number of similar projects and discovered the concept wasn’t as new as I thought it was. Just the same, the potential is wide open.
By the way, lest you think the title of this post was mistyped, the term being used is ARt emphasizing A(ugmented)R(eality). (Though I suppose there is some redundancy in the title).
There is even an app that helps you paint murals on surfaces with the use of your phone, apparently the higher tech version of overhead projection. (I think your arms would be less tired using an overhead projector.)
This is one of my favorite uses among those I found: