Lansdown Lecture - Heartlands: heart-rate, GPS, gameplay

'Ere be Dragons

Lansdown Lecture - Heartlands: heart-rate, GPS, gameplay

'Ere Be Dragons is a pervasive digital artwork which encourages users to explore both their environment and themselves. Based on mobile computing, it is responsive to location and biodata (heartrate) which it uses to construct a responsive visual and auditory environment overlaid on the real world. It is designed to be highly engaging while at the same time raising important issues about health and behaviour. The work is an interdisciplinary collaboration between digital artists, an electronic arts centre, health scientists, and the UK research laboratory of a major IT company (Hewlett Packard)

Now here is a cool application for A.R glasses. Building a virtual world based on your heartbeat - the more your heart works during healthy exercise, so a more extravagant world is created around you. This could spawn all sorts of games, and be linked into other 3d worlds , so you could create content there with you heart beat.

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It's just a shame the 1 hour lecture is in north London, two and a half hours away:- they need to broadcast it in cyberspace so it's a bit easier to see. If we had our A.R glasses, we could all attend.

Through Rose Coloured Glasses

Through Rose Coloured Glasses

So we've skipped ahead 10 years. We've all got these snazzy Mixed Reality glasses on. We never get lost any more, because the GPS in the frame links into Google maps and displays right in front of our eyes where we are, where we wanna go;- and it's booked a table at the restaurant across town where we're trying to find. The kids are all fitter, because they aren't sat behind a computer playing games and shooting aliens for hours on end- they're running around the streets playing computer games and shooting virtual aliensfor hours on end. There's less congestion because the SatNav in the glasses helps us avoid snarl ups and keeps traffic moving, and there's less accidents, because the sensors detect on-coming danger and steer you out of the way. Everything is rosy. But what then?

Death by Pixels

There's a multitude of benefits and cool advantages to this technology, and there will also be a shadier side to it. Just as scandal after scandal hit virtual worlds like Second Life- fraud, child porn rings, undercover cop avatars, extortion, viruses being realised,- there will surely be an underworld develop in the brave new world of augmented reality. Rockstar games will probably find themselves in a lot of trouble with their latest violent mixed reality game they'll probably produce, with high def images of virtual massacres- there's bound to be a class full of kids in America get senselessly slain by someone playing Grand Theft Auto 9 in A.R.
If the glasses have a built in lens and recording capability, people will be able to experience someone else's reality. The film Strange Days explored this theme, where 'dealers' would sell copies of a porn stars reality, or the experience of someone being killed. Some became hooked on the reality of others.

Jacked into Hyper-Reality

To escape all the stresses of constant connectivity to the world, and tune out of all the info and ads of A.R, many will turn on to altered states of (augmented) reality, with programmes created to simulate and induce trance like states and euphoric journeys through psychedelic lands. As the technology and applications mash up and mix together, all kinds of strange hybrids will evolve. Cyberpunk novelist Jeff Noon's creates dystopic visions of Britain's future, where party junkies inject liquid music, where people remix themselves with technology in varying degrees of 'roboness', and where the thrill seekers enter hallucinogenic virtual worlds for kicks.
It won't be long of course, before the boys in blue (#00008B) come pounding on the door with their virtual cops to pull the plug on all those subversives, avatar agents sent to restore order to the matrix.

But at the end of the day, the most important thing for most will be how cool the glasses look. Whatever changes happen to society with the advent of A.R, Apple will still be in the headlines with their latest iEye glasses.

Future Design Presentation.

Reality in the mix

The time to make the presentations for the Design Futures Project is fast approaching, and I've been trying to whittle down my idea into a more focused idea, but i think that the nature of what I'm researching (augmented reality) has such wide reaching potential, that to pin it down to 1 or 2 simple themes will loose what in some ways is the main point of this product/platform. I see the potential of A.R will touch many areas of life, from training and educational use, through to web surfing, teleconferencing and virtual work environments, to gaming and immersive panoramic cinema experiences.
In one sense the glasses can be seen as the latest in portable ultra slim monitors, and when used in conjunction with a PDA device or computer, can run complex applications, which can be highly specialized for training purposes, or popular mainstream web apps, like Google Maps and MMORPGS and social networking virtual environments. I was trying to come up with a simple interface that can present information to the user in a way that's simple to use and doesn't overload the user will to much information, but the interface will vary for each application used, as on a regular computer.
The glasses will be 'transparent monitors' that can overlay graphics over the users field of vision, or can 'blackout' to run total Virtual Reality applications. They also work on the assumption that developments in fuel cells and power issues will be at the stage where they can be produced small and lightweight enough to fit into the arms of the glasses. Currently developments in power cells , data storage and processor chips are producing smaller and more efficient products, so it's feasible that within 10 years the technology will be small enough to fit inside something as small as a pair of glasses, without being as clumsy and cumbersome as current VR goggles.