*Not every working artist has a doctorate, but Helen often comes across like she oughta be Professor or maybe even Chancellor Papagiannis.
http://junaio.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/the-story-behind-arstories-interview-with-helen-papagiannis/
(...)
“AR, like cinema when it was first new, commenced with a
wonderment of the technology”. You’ve often compared the
beginning of moving pictures to that of Augmented Reality. Your
TEDx talk had eventgoers pass through “the ghost of Melies”; early
responses to the Lumiere brothers The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
had reviewers speaking of haunting apparitions and phantoms
moving across the wall; compared to the initial reaction to film, is AR
a similarly-unnerving paradigm shift in the way we experience
media?
We’re entering a whole new visual medium and language with AR, and thereby a
paradigm shift (similar to film when first new). This is an area of my PhD research
and one that I’m currently writing about. I mentioned astonishment – this is actually a term film theorist Tom Gunning uses to describe the initial reaction of
early film spectators, and one that I draw from. Gunning describes a sense of
shock that arises in the audience from a fear that they are threatened by a fastspeed
locomotive, which is charging at them from on screen.
There’s a wonder at the illusion presented. Similarly, we could say there is a moment where the AR spider evokes a similar reaction of threat and astonishment, although in reality, we know it’s not there. “Presence” is a term VR and AR researchers use to
describe the ‘sense of really being there’. Merging the physical environment and
digital objects in AR creates potentially large opportunities for presence. We
need to harness this alongside context to create compelling content and
experiences. Unlike film, and any medium before it, AR has it’s own unique
characteristics that we need to leverage. I spoke to this in my ARE2011
presentation....
