Augmenting the White Cube

This chapter addresses the theme of digital artworks as innovative forms, looking at how they are conceived, constructed and evaluated. This is discussed from the perspective of my own professional experience as a practitioner researcher. In this chapter, I will explore the idea that ‘mixed’ or ‘augmented reality’ art is emerging as the latest term to describe a set of technologically enabled works that sit under the rubric of interactive art. This analysis of augmented reality art is discussed through the description of a practice/thesis research model and contextualised through the twin lenses of digital technologies and contemporary art history. This contextualisation places augmented reality art in a line of digitally enabled creative practices that have already become an accepted part of the fine arts canon, a practice that is prefigured by the media forms of interactive art, net art, computational art and other digitally enabled forms. I will make the claim that augmented reality can be seen as a predictable next generation response to the on-going interweaving of digital technologies and art, a preference that is increasingly occurring in contemporary western culture. This argument will also be played out through the description of a piece of my own work from the field. The description of this work will form the basis for a set of reflections on the practice of making augmented reality artworks. It will include observations on the curatorial considerations of augmented reality in a gallery context, and the participatory role of the audience in activating these types of works. I will also explore the phenomenon of augmented reality art from the perspective of the audience and their expectations and experience of such works. Finally a practice/thesis research model will be discussed that will describe my personal approach to research in this field, which will be framed through an analysis of the relationship between practice and writing in the context of postgraduate university study.