1) The document discusses the theory and practice of augmented reality (AR), noting that AR promises to provide a unified view of data connected to specific places. 2) It describes challenges in bringing AR from theory to practice, such as technological limitations of devices and a lack of common standards, as well as ensuring authentic representation of communities. 3) Examples are given of prototyping AR applications for storytelling around sacred lands to help bridge cultures, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges of practical AR use cases.

1. AR Theory to Practice
@anselm @paigesaez @makerlab
http://augmentedrealityevent.com/ June 2th 2010 SFO

2. About @anselm
• Social Cartography enthusiast.
• Developing AR apps.
• Previous projects include Platial
Ning, Meedan, Wherecamp.
• Historically a games developer: ‘Lord of the
Rings’, ‘Dragon’s Lair’, ‘Vigilance’.
• Long term personal project is to simulate
watersheds and eventually the planet as a
better anticipatory decision making tool.

3. praxis
• In Ancient Greek the word praxis
(πρᾱξις) referred to activity engaged in
by free people. Aristotle held that there
were three basic activities of people:
theoria, poiesis and praxis.
• 50% time: “Spend half your time working in
a hands on practice. Spend the other half
engaging your community and peers.”

4. The Theory Part

5. Energetic technology collision.
AR collides VRML fanatics,
game developers, hardcore
gis experts, social network
gurus, urban planners,
artists, cloud computing
people, mobile devs, UX
experts, silo players, virtual
currency & mobile ad folks
into an attempt to build
unified views.
Strange new ideas will
emerge!

6. Reality in your pocket?
• AR promises a single unified view
• A zero-click interface to reality
• Data that is most important to your quality of life
• An opportunity to truly understand place
• Now about “actionable verbs” not just “data”

7. AR is different
from the Web
• Information, money and work
are often deeply connected to specific places.
• Many businesses try to erase place: Ebay, Netflix,
Amazon, McDonalds.
• AR is actually more similar to a pre-industrial
understanding of the uniqueness of each place.
• AR may not scale in the same way - for example
micro local advertising probably won’t work.

8. Augmented Storytelling
• Back in the locative era @richgibson said
“maps tell stories”
• What will Augmented Stories be like?
• Co-learning; audience and storytellers both
have to learn the grammar - and the
grammar will evolve

9. The Practice Part

10. @bavc
• mentoring for the Sacred Land Film Project
team at BAVC Producers Institute
• http://www.sacredland.org/

11. • Devils Tower, one of the Sacred Land Film projects

12. • Sharing the local narratives versus Western narrative

13. • Prototyping in Google Sketchup

14. Internal Challenges
• Internally we have different understandings
• We expect ‘Minority Report’
• We get something more like ‘pong’
• AR has no ‘frame’ or ‘boundary’ unlike a
website; makes it hard to put bounds on
the experience; where it starts and stops.
• Authenticity of our own non-native voice

15. • Paige Saez storyboarding and visualizations

16. • (looking at the constellations)

17. • (perhaps even identify plants)

18. • (actually pulling it together)

19. External Challenges
• no cell reception!
• huge memory requirements
• direct sunlight on device
• smartphones are expensive
• potential audience is unfamiliar with AR
• off the shelf AR viewers are not good
enough - high degree of customization is
always required and always will be

20. Getting out of the way

21. Closing
• A good open source AR editor is needed
• Design grammars have to improve
• Physical hardware has to improve
• AR may be a great storytelling device
• As a technology it can help bridge cultures
• Fun to be involved with a practical use case

22. Thanks!
• @anselm
• @paigesaez
• @makerlab
• @bavc