Flyar

Flyar: Augmented Reality Twitter Visualization App from YDreams on Vimeo.

Flyar turns your computer screen into a kind of mirror, in which you see little birds that aren't actually there. You can even reach up and push the birds around. How do applications like this affect our notions of embodiment and presence?

More info & download: Flyar

Makeover Culture...and Paris...

D.I.Y. Makeover Culture

 

I am curious about the development of this makeover culture across the web--- this example is nothing new (more standard). ivillage offers a free virtual makeover, allowing for the viewer/consumer to test out various hairstyle and make-up products. You can upload your own photo; however, the site also offers a selected group of female faces to “play with” in this process. The campaign for this type of makeover falls along the line of being “risk free” (like so many products). http://beauty.ivillage.com/0,,9jlxfdd5,00.html

 

Similarly, Instyle Magazine offers a Hollywood celebrity makeover. The viewer again (assumed female) is allowed access to a catalogue of celebrity “looks” (of course, only what is the most recent and most in-style). The features are highly similar to a number of makeover games (applying eyeliner, lipstick, blush and choosing an appropriate hair style for the model).  The makeover also allows for the viewer/participant to play an active consumer in acquiring this look (“in reality”) with tips from designers and stylists who actually applied this “look” to the represented celebrity image. Whether it is obtaining Deborah Messing’s cheeks, to Drew Barrymore’s lips, the breakdown of this “look” coincides well with the products applied and described. http://www.instyle.com/instyle/makeover/

 

Or, there is also the very upfront “warp Paris Hilton” online game…which stretches a bit out of the DIY culture, but offers (I don’t know if “interesting” is the right word here) a very obvious mixing of an image of Paris Hilton (you can also do this your own personal photo- YES!). I’ve noticed that a lot of folks on facebook have been playing with this setting in profile pictures…It’s not deep by any means…mildly entertaining.

http://www.bubblebox.com/play/girls/1265.htm

 

Bubblebox.com offers another DIY inspired home/shopping network themed redecoration of a girl’s room. The user can change anything from the carpeting, to the window/ color/furniture settings (to my delight- I discovered I could even change the color of my pet bunny to green…now only if IKEA offered this feature, then they’d be onto something.). This game is part of a series of “highly rated” girls games, which makes me wonder about the actual demographics (perhaps the people who actually play this game are people like myself that enjoy the features of changing animal coloring rather than the whole “redecorating” aspect). I am not familiar with this site in the slightest, but I think (from the looks of it) it offers some interesting terrain for looking into this notion of the avatar (especially regarding online female girl corporate branding). http://www.bubblebox.com/play/girls/984.htm

selling makeover culture

Thought this brief article reflected a lot about the whole online makeover culture and its ties with reality TV, as well as selling this image of "health" within the fitness industry...http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090601/how-would-you-sell-a-virtual-makeover.html

Daily Makeover

SO much better.

Rag-doll Avatars

Lisa Nakamura's text on avatars and visual Culture echoed my experience with Unicef's doll-making workshops in classrooms in France. Terri Kapsalis' quote, "The catalog encourages girls to pick dolls that look like them" (p. 141) reminded me of Catherine, pictured above. She chose the hair color of the doll to be blond and had the outfit sewn but still needed sharpies for the facial features. She asked one of the adult volunteers for help to draw the doll's eyes. The woman yanked the doll out of her hands and told the Vietnamese-French girl: "Why don't we give her beautiful almond-shaped eyes like yours???" and proceeded to draw them without letting Catherine explain that she wanted her doll to have big round blue eyes, as she'd told me.

On the other hand, some of the other children had no problem creating dolls -- off of a given "base" (brown, black, white or orange) -- that did not completely resemble their own bodies:

AR and Image Recognition

I'm interested in the ways that augmented reality can be used to extend storytelling and interaction into the real world. The literary and gameplay potentials presented by this nascent technology seem limitless. That said, we have a fair distance to go before our world starts looking like the one depicted in Denno Coil. One of the biggest stumbling blocks I've encountered is the issue of precise positioning. Without knowing the user's exact location and orientation, an AR system can't properly overlay/position objects. Most of the AR apps we've seen thus far depend use glyphs to accomplish this task; others use carefully pre-positioned wifi routers or Bluetooth nodes to triangulate the user's location. The problem with these solutions is that, while they make for decent demos, they don't really scale. If we're going to tell stories using AR, I suspect that we'll be looking for solutions that break free of the need for pre-set glyphs, routers or other equipment.

This is where image recognition comes in. Projects like Microsoft's Photosynth illustrate the capacity of image databases to define 3D space. More recently, AR researchers have started to use image recognition/mapping metaphors to create fluid "glyph-free" applications. The team at the University of Graz's Christian Doppler Laboratory have just posted some exciting new videos of their work in this field.

These videos hint at the kind of seamlessness of interaction we can expect from AR in the near future. Someday soon we'll be able to look through little windows like the one depicted below:





More: Handheld Augmented Reality at the Christian Doppler Laboratory

Meet the 'Vook'

Simon & Schuster is releasing four "vooks", hybrids that intersperse video throughout electronic text that can be viewed on the Web, the iPhone or the iPod Touch. Instead of simply translating the traditional book onto digital form, the vook adds features such as videos demonstrating how to perform an exercise or make homemade skincare potions. You know, high brow stuff. But there are also vook novels (or "digi-novels") in the works that will feature video segments of up to 90 seconds which will advance the plot. There are also plans to "enhance" books by music or even perfume.

"It really makes a story more real if you know what the characters look like", according to Amazon reviewer Fred L. Gronvall. Really? Maybe it's just me but I thought the whole point of a novel was to exercise the reader's (user's?) ima-gi-na-tion.

A less cringe-inducing trend is the participatory novel, in which readers' feedback help construct subplots and new characters for following chapters. "The Amanda Project", a recently released young-adult mystery series invites readers to post their comments on a web site, which then informs what paths the characters will take in subsequent volumes.

How to use new media hybridity, though, to help us understand Lacan, Hegel and Derrida? Or, will the Lacans, Hegels and Derridas of the (near) future formulate their concepts in ways that lend themselves more easily to their hybrid digital presentation and dissemination?