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Intermediary zones: Augmented space between real and digital

Article in International Journal of Arts and Technology · January 2009

DOI: 10.1504/IJART.2009.029237

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International
Journal of

Arts and
Technology

Volume 2, No. 4, 2009

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IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL, MIXED OR
AUGMENTED REALITY ART

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Makebelieve Design and Consulting,
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Maurice Benayoun
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Int. J. Arts and Technology, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2009 297

Intermediary zones: augmented space between

real and digital

Horea Avram
Art History and Communication Studies,
McGill University,
Arts Building, 853 Sherbrooke Street West,
Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T6, Canada
E-mail: horea.avram@mail.mcgill.ca

Abstract: This paper starts from the premise that, although augmented reality
(AR) proposes a new perceptual experience situated at the limit between the
actual and the virtual, when one sees it in the larger context of contemporary art
practice one can observe its strong connections with previous artistic forms.
Installation art and virtual reality (VR) are the two important reference points in
the genealogy of AR art, their specific ways of using space having a particular
relevance in AR’s own spatiality. In this sense, I see AR mainly as a spatial
paradigm situated at the confluence between installation-type physical space
and the digital spatiality of VR. I would suggest that AR creates a new species
of space, an ‘augmented space’ in which physical reality and digital images
coexist. The present essay focuses on this intermediary zone, discussing the
problems of interactivity, virtuality, illusionism and representation following
two seminal artworks in the field of AR.
Keywords: augmented space; augmented reality; real space; digital space;
installation art; virtual reality; medium; representation.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Avram, H. (2009)
‘Intermediary zones: augmented space between real and digital’, Int. J. Arts
and Technology, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp.297–310.
Biographical notes: Horea Avram is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in Art History
and Communication Studies at the McGill University, Montreal. He writes and
researches in the areas of augmented reality, installation art, new digital media,
the aesthetics of space and the problem of representation. He is the Research
Assistant and Coordinator of the research project ‘Augmented Reality in
Contemporary Art and Popular Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ (funded
by FQRSC – Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture;
Principal investigator, Dr. Christine Ross).

Up to very recent years, augmented reality (AR) was a weird phrase, and for many it still
is. Its somehow pretentious name, together with its proven capabilities in terms of effect,
not to mention the sophisticated technology involved, gave AR the status of one of the
most audacious acts in contemporary technological and artistic developments. And this is
not without reason, since AR is able to create for the user a spectacular visual situation
resulting from the combination of a real scene with virtual digital images that augment
the scene with additional information, in real time. Distancing itself from virtual reality
(VR) – a technology that pre-supposes the segregation of the viewer into a completely
artificial space, AR proposes instead a system that remains anchored in reality and that
aims to offer the user an experience where he/she hardly (or, ideally, cannot) tell the
difference between the real world and the virtual augmentation of it.

Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

298 H. Avram

Finding applications in more and more areas, AR proves to be, indeed, not only one
of the most spectacular technologies but also one of the domains showing the greatest
dynamics of development and expansion. Scientific literature dedicated to this issue
offers substantial explanations regarding the what, how, where and whether of AR
technology, but, until now, there are only a small number of writings that deal with this
subject from an aesthetic or larger cultural standpoint. If, engineeringly speaking, the
matter appears to be more settled, with regard to the use of the term and concept of AR in
the artistic realm, things are rather vague. The (yet) small number of artworks that
employ AR technology contribute to this situation as well.
So, a closer look at the aesthetic specificities entailed by the artistic use of AR
technology is needed, and this essay is an attempt to address some of these aspects, in the
particular circumstances offered by two typical AR art works.
In order to theoretically circumscribe AR technology in the art sphere, we need to
historicise and contextualise the ‘object’, the practice and function of AR vis-à-vis recent
artistic manifestations. This means acknowledging that, in the domain of visual arts, AR
does not appear in a void. Previous artistic forms like installation art and VR play
essential roles in the genealogy of AR art, their specific ways of using actual and virtual
space, respectively, having a particular relevance in AR’s own spatiality. In this sense, I
see AR mainly as a spatial paradigm, since AR is capable of building a specific kind of
spatiality situated at the confluence between physical reality and digital representation.
As Manovich (2005) has argued:
“Overlaying dynamic and contextual data over physical space is a particular
case of a general aesthetic paradigm: how to combine different spaces together.
Of course electronically augmented space is unique since information is
personalized for every user, since it can change dynamically over time, since it
is delivered through an interactive multimedia interface, etc. Yet it is crucial to
see it as a conceptual rather than just as a technological issue, as something that
already was often a part of other architectural and artistic paradigms.”
Being a technology that permits the spatial combination of a physical scene with
computer generated information in real time, AR is a place of dynamic encounters
between actual reality and digital information, between actual and simulated space and
between the work and the viewer, formulated in terms such as site- and viewer-
specificity, interactivity and real-time constructions. What is important to note is that AR,
although a vast concept, is specifically demarcated here as a visual organisation based on
an illusionist, immersive intertwining of reality and digital images. The definition of AR
is consistent with the spatial description of AR given by Azuma et al. (2001, p.34) who
talk about a “system [that] supplements the real world with virtual (computer-generated)
objects that appear to coexist in the same space as the real world”.
The idea of coexistence is crucial in regard to AR spatiality since, I would suggest,
AR creates a new species of space, an ‘augmented space’ that amounts both to physical
reality and the digital image. This intermediary space is a confluence zone where
installation-type spatiality and VR spatiality meet. These two art genres will be used here
not only to help theoretically circumscribe and historically contextualise augmented
space but also to illuminate – at least partially – in this particular context such thorny
concepts like reality and virtuality.
In order to facilitate and actually to better ‘calibrate’ the theoretical approach of this
augmented space, let me introduce two examples of AR artworks that can illustrate the
complex spatial dynamics between actual and digital in AR practice.
 Intermediary zones: augmented space between real and digital 299

Living Room 2 is a collective project coordinated by Jan Torpus (2007). The work is
comprised of a real environment (a ‘living room’) with pieces of furniture, over which
computer-generated images corresponding to different ‘scenarios’ are superimposed.
Wearing a HMD, the user can select different preset scenarios, interact with real and
virtual elements and use the furniture, lamp or ventilator provided in the living room as
interfaces. As the authors write, “the specific user experience is enhanced by the
synchronous design of the interior, of visuals and sound, of interaction and interface and
by ‘cross-world’ narrative”. “Thus, the space becomes a hybrid between an immersive
movie and interactive wallpaper” (Torpus, 2007). Particular attention is paid to the
participant’s position in the room: a tracking device measures the coordinates of the
participant’s direction of view, then, according to the viewer’s position, the system
operates occlusions of the real space and simultaneously, congruent superimpositions of
3D space upon it (Figures 1–3).

Figure 1 Torpus, Living Room 2, General view, 2007 (augmented reality installation) (see online
version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Torpus (2007).

Figure 2 Torpus, Living Room 2, ‘AR-décors’, 2007 (augmented reality installation) (see online
version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Torpus (2007).

300 H. Avram

Figure 3 Torpus, Living Room 2, ‘Ecosystems’, 2007 (augmented reality installation) (see online
version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Torpus (2007).

Spac[E]scape is an installation created by the Workspace Unlimited (2007) group in
different locations. Workspace Unlimited (2007) is an organisation founded by Thomas
Soetens (new media artist) and Kora Van den Bulcke (architect) as “a mobile laboratory
and creation space \dedicated to experimental new media production and research,
situated at the point where art, architecture and digital technologies converge to create
new contexts of hybrid and augmented reality”.

Figure 4 Workspace Unlimited, Spac[E]scape at the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival at V1,
Rotterdam, 2007 (augmented reality installation) (see online version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Workspace Unlimited (2007).

 Intermediary zones: augmented space between real and digital 301

Figure 5 Workspace Unlimited, Spac[E]scape at the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival at V2,
Rotterdam, 2007 (augmented reality installation) (see online version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Workspace Unlimited (2007).

Spac[E]scape is an environment articulated between real and digital space, aiming at
creating, as the artists put it, a “third space that acts as an intermediate space that opens
new perspectives on the meaning and experience of physical and virtual space
overlapping with each other” (Workspace Unlimited, 2007; Figures 4 and 5).
A virtual simulation of the exhibition space where the work was installed was
recreated in a highly realistic manner and projected onto the architectural surfaces. Users
interacting with the installation discover a video reflection of themselves embedded in the
virtual space. Placed in indoor locations the installation was also connected to the
common grounds network of virtual worlds (IMPLANT, DEVMAP and EXTENSION)
and was simultaneously accessible from terminals of the common grounds network in
Montreal, Rotterdam and Gent. The main goal of this project is, according to its authors
(Workspace Unlimited, 2007) to “raise questions about presence, representation and
identity as a reflection on mediaculture where the relation between real and virtual takes
more and more complex forms”.
To begin with, we should take a closer look at the role and function of real space in
articulating augmented space. Now, of course, ‘real’ in the expression ‘real space’ is very
problematic, since any attempt to pin down the concept of the ‘real’ involves more than
calling for a ‘common-sense’ definition. Such an endeavour would necessitate a broad
search for intricate explanations offered by a whole history of philosophy. Not only
would this exceed my intentions here but also it would carry the discussion into other
zones actually too general for the subject examined here. Nevertheless, to evaluate the
idea of the real in this context is to surpass binary descriptions based on ‘true’ and ‘false’,
but it cannot escape from inquiring about notions such as space, materiality, experience,
representation and, above all, digital technology. So, to simplify matters (with all the
risks that this entails) I would consider the ‘real’ in this context as something given to our
senses without machinic mediation. Basically, the actual space and objects as presented
to our senses. The real is therefore regarded here as a physical spatial paradigm, but one
that internalises the changes and redefinitions contemporary technology would bring to
such a paradigm. So, once again, that is why, rather than circling around general
302 H. Avram

concepts, or focusing on subjective perception, I am concentrating this discussion on the

way the real is experienced through or as space.
It might be useful to consider here – although with reservations – the idea suggested
by Heidegger (1993, p.169) that an artwork “opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in
force”. And then, “a work, by being a work, makes space for [world’s worlding]
spaciousness” (Heidegger, 1993, p.170). In this sense, as a spatial arrangement par
excellence, AR opens up a space, its own space which discloses1 something about the real
world and even more than that.
So, real space is seen here as having indicative attributes. As in installation art, in AR,
too, real space is about disclosure and exposure, about presence and about presentation of
a sort. This is the real under specific conditions, those established by the artist, by the
work and by the viewers, together with all the relationships between them. Art forms like
installation art and AR propose, present and demarcate their own space within reality,
while remaining part of that reality. So, to refer to real space in AR is not to speak about
any space, about ‘reality at large’, but about a specific area (regardless of how mobile this
is), a precise environment artistically delimited and related to a particular context
considered for its physical or conceptual character. This space is a species of reality, but
nevertheless quite a peculiar one. I would name this space within reality, for the lack of a
better term, ‘installationist space.’ Of course despite its very particular, somehow biased
name, this space is what counts as ‘reality’ in AR artworks.
A typical way to appropriate such an ‘installationist space’ within reality is, for
example, Ilya Kabakov’s The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment. The work
is a delimited ‘theatrical’ space (comprised of a room and a number of domestic
elements, including a home-made catapult) that stages a narrative about an alleged flight
into space carried out by an ordinary citizen. A metaphor for escaping from the
communist Soviet ‘paradise’, the work epitomises not only a typical form of
installationism but also the way in which real space (and objects) are employed to build a
fictional space.
Engaging either a sharp or smooth relationship with the surrounding environment, an
‘installationist space’ always arrogates its own territory. Certainly, there is something
distinctive in the way that such a territory is marked off but, physically speaking, there is
no radical separation between the world in general and the fictional, real space of the
installation and AR art. Buskirk (2003, p.15), in her book The Contingent Object of
Contemporary Art, speaks about a certain ‘contingent physicality’ of works subsumable
to an installationist typology, one that allows a spatial and temporal transfer between the
viewers and the work and between them and the activated surrounding space.
Functioning under the direct conditioning of reality, AR does not propose a complete
rupture between the artwork and the reality around it (as is the case with VR, for
example). On the contrary, while immersed in the AR experience, the viewer remains
‘physically contingent’ with the surrounding environment, that is, aware of its nature and
potentialities (think about how in Living Room 2, for instance, the pieces of furniture, the
lamp or the ventilator become interfaces for accessing the content of the work). Everyday
objects and real space are indeed important ingredients in the menu of many artistic
manifestations attached to the rubrics installation art and AR art. As Buskirk (2003,
p.208) puts it, “If it was conventions associated with museum and gallery display that
initially allowed artists to point to everyday objects and identify them as art, an expanded
definition of the work has now been taken up and used by artists to point outward in ways
that heighten perception of the world at large”. And AR is precisely such a way to point
 Intermediary zones: augmented space between real and digital 303

at and to heighten the surrounding reality, this time by augmenting it with electronic
visual information. It is important to observe that to augment reality means not to weaken
it, but on the contrary, to enhance its physicality, and to expand its meaning and power of
representation.
‘Theatrical’ by nature, ‘installationist space’ can be described as an immersive scene.
Although usually associated with VR environments, ‘immersivity’ is an important aspect
of the viewing experience in the conditions offered by real installationist space as well.
Speaking about ‘total installation’s’ theatrical spatiality, Bishop (2005, p.14) writes: “The
idea of ‘total installation’ offers a very particular model of viewing experience – one that
not only physically immerses the viewer in a 3D space but also it is psychologically
absorptive too”. The physical construction of the Living Room 2, as well as the interiors
where Spac[E]scape is installed, represents such an installationist space, a physically and
psychologically absorptive environment. But unlike ‘classical’ installations, the
physicality of these spaces is augmented with digital virtual information, one that
engages and in fact radically changes viewers’ experience (Figures 6 and 7).
The main role – declared or not – of AR is to collapse the distance between actual
reality and art by, on one hand, incorporating the real directly into the artwork’s fabric,
and on the other hand, by seamlessly integrating the virtual information into the real. To
obtain a complete image of how these transfers operate, we should address the other
important element of the AR equation, one that is no less problematic: virtuality. Situated
in close relationship with virtuality are the concepts of illusionism and trompe-l’oeil,
themselves important notions that help to better understand the genealogy of augmented
space as a hybrid entity between the real and digital.

Figure 6 Torpus, Living Room 2, General view, 2007 (augmented reality installation) (see online
version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Torpus (2007).

304 H. Avram

Figure 7 Workspace Unlimited, Spac[E]scape, Vooruit, 2005 (augmented reality installation)

(see online version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Workspace Unlimited (2007).

When I use the term ‘virtual’ in this context, I am referring to the digital images (objects,
animations and space) overlapped on the real environment of the works and created in a
direct relationship to viewers’ agency – the abstract elements and sensitive ‘creatures’
that populate environment of Living Room 2, or the simulated images of the exhibition
space and the video reflection of the viewers embedded in the projected space, in
Spac[E]scapes.
In both these examples, at the visual level virtual space appropriates architectural or
‘installationist’ spatialities, but the result is only a metaphor of space. In other words,
virtual space is only an image of space. But a credible image, nevertheless. The rendering
of such an image is made possible not only by the use of perspectival views with multiple
vanishing points and a mobile observer but also especially by the application of tracking,
registration, resolution and accurate measurements of the viewer’s and objects’
movement in space, as well as by position adjustments and video corrections of the
digital superimposed images. As Bimber and Raskar (2005, p.5) have pointed out,
“Graphical objects, even if rendered in a high visual quality, would have to be integrated
into the real environment in a consistent way. For instance, they have to follow a
consistent occlusion, shadow-casting, and inter-reflection behaviour…”.
Perhaps the most significant aspect to note at this point is that – when rendered
digitally – virtual images have no physicality per se. “Materiality – if one wishes to call it
as – is limited to the individual pixel”, justly remarks Grau (2003, p.207) about virtual
images in the context of VR environments. While tailored to the traditions of analogue
space (architectural, installationist, representational, etc.), virtual space – more precisely
 Intermediary zones: augmented space between real and digital 305

digital space – differs in a fundamental way from its precedents in one key respect
observes Manovich (2001, p.251–252):
“For the first time, space becomes a media type. Just as other media types –
audio, video, stills and text – it can now be instantly transmitted, stored, and
retrieved; compressed, reformatted, streamed, filtered, computed, programmed,
and interacted with. In other words, all operations that are possible with media
as a result of its conversion to computer data can also now apply to
representations of 3-D space.”
To say that the virtual image has no physicality is to acknowledge the fact that the term
‘virtual’ refers first and foremost to the (im)materiality of an image and not necessarily to
the effect it conveys (i.e. illusionism and/or immersivity). In fact, too many authors
confine themselves – misleading, I would say – to assert that ‘virtual’ should essentially
be understood as illusionist, immersive and, of course, digital.
As its Latin etymology indicates, the term virtual (from Virtus, Virtualis) refers to
something that exists potentially but not actually, to something “relating to, or possessing
a power of acting without the agency of matter” (Merriam-Webster, 1993). As Friedberg
(2006, p.11) very aptly pointed out:
“The term ‘virtual’ serves to distinguish between any representation or
appearance (whether optically, technologically, or artisanally produced) that
appears ‘functionally or effectively but not formally’ of the same materiality as
what it represents. Virtual images have a materiality and a reality but of a
different kind, a second-order materiality, liminally immaterial. The terms
‘original’ and ‘copy’ will not apply here, because the virtuality of the image
does not imply direct mimesis, but a transfer – more like metaphor – from one
plane of meaning and appearance to another.”
Indeed, ‘virtual’ designs possibilities, but it never acquires the level of the ‘actual.’
‘Liminally immaterial’, it relies on appearance rather than on presence, regardless of how
convincing virtuality’s claim may be. Stating potentialities but having no credentials,
virtual remains a ‘trope’: it could never be a literal presence but only an image, a
representation, an appearance.2
It is true that what stands as virtual and what stands as illusion are very often
convergent, and our examples would attest precisely to this. The dynamic digital images
generated by Living Room 2 and the large architectural vistas projected in Spac[E]scape
are such immaterial forms, virtual representations that, despite their claim to ‘being-
there’, rely only on appearance and deceit.
Based on such assumptions, some authors (Vidler, 2000, p.236) suggest that, by
lacking physicality, virtual space reveals a condition of ‘no-space’:
“For what is spatial, after all, about an endless string of 0’s and 1’s, a string that
for the purposes of display has to be looped around a screen; an endless line,
without direction, displayed on a screen without depth? While the
representation of information might well have spatial cognates, information
itself seems to have no inherent spatiality.”
These remarks are actually in line with Lev Manovich’s (2001, p. 253) own observation
that ‘there is no space in cyberspace.’ But despite these – although not
incorrect – assumptions, virtual space remains a space, if not physically, then at least at
the representational and perceptual levels. In other words, virtual space exists not as a
material form, but only as experience, as an effect.
306 H. Avram

And this effect is given by illusionism. If ‘virtual’ is about the (im)materiality of the
image, ‘illusion’ points to the representational aspect, more precisely, to the effect
transmitted by an image. An effect that is based on mimetic/simulated or, in any case,
‘credible’ rendition of an object and spatiality. For what are the ‘vegetal’ forms
suspended in Living Room 2 or the large architectural spaces opened by Spac[E]scape if
not attempts to replace reality (its image and its function), if not visual entities that claim
presence (actuality and immediacy)?. And here, ‘presence’ entails also a performative
dimension since illusionist images’ very existence is determined by viewers’ participation
(Figures 8–10).
Illusion is the realm of the fake and trompe-l’oeil is the most sophisticated way to
deceive the viewer. Provoking and surprising the viewer is one of the goals of any
trompe-l’oeil. Grootenboer (2005, p.4), in her book The Rhetoric of Perspective, writes:
“The trompe l’oeil is a practical joke that provokes our eyes to the point of
insult, and of doubt: the deceit undermines our reliance on our perceptions. The
moment we are snared by the trompe l’oeil’s lure, we enter a realm of illusion
that forces itself upon us as a truth, whose artificiality we detect belatedly.”
But if, in traditional trompe-l’oeil, the trick is ‘condemned’ to be unveiled after a split
second, due to the inherent limitations of the medium of painting, in AR the use of
multiple perspective and real-time adjustments of the image according to the viewer’s
position in space, the illusion becomes flexible, making the trick not only harder to
unmask but also more acceptable to the viewer.

Figure 8 Torpus, Living Room 2, ‘AR-décors’, 2007 (augmented reality installation) (see online
version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Torpus (2007).

 Intermediary zones: augmented space between real and digital 307

Figure 9 Torpus, Living Room 2, ‘Ecosystems’, 2007 (augmented reality installation) (see online
version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Torpus (2007).

Figure 10 Workspace Unlimited, Spac[E]scape, Installation, Laboral 2007 (augmented reality

installation) (see online version for colours)

Source: Courtesy Workspace Unlimited (2007).

Augmentation means not a simple ‘placing on top’, but the incorporation of digital
information into a precise environment (an ‘installationist space’), in a direct relationship
with that space and with the viewer who experiences the work (of course, site-specificity,
scale adaptations and synchronisation play crucial roles in the seamless integration of
308 H. Avram

digital information into the actual environment). In contrast with VR, which ignores the
physical, immediate space in favour of a segregated experience of some artificial worlds,
AR pre-supposes a twofold connection to reality, both by using the direct physical
environment and by suggesting reality’s appearance through virtual images. And by
stimulating and relying on such connections, AR is perhaps one of the most sophisticated
expressions of a contemporary thinking model grounded in hybridity, one which, once it
enters the field of new media studies, “usually suspends the question of the intercultural
so as to focus on intermediality” (Ross, 2005, p.33).
AR is therefore – at least in the examples mentioned here – about creating a
‘perfected’ spatial intertwining between two ‘ontological layers’: one real, the other
virtual. The result is an augmented space, a space-event that owes its fulfilment to
viewers’ interactive involvement at both levels. What Living Room 2 or Spac[E]scape
propose in terms of spatiality is precisely this: a third term, an ‘other’ space that refuses
easy identification with both real and digital spaces. The spatiality of these works is real
and virtual at the same time; they articulate a heterotopic situation (to bring in the much
celebrated Foucaultian term) that responds and exists, actually, in direct correlation with
the viewer’s presence. Such a space would appear as ‘something like a counter-site’ –
according to Foucault’s account – as “a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the
real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously
represented, contested and inverted” (Foucault, 2004, p.374).
Drawing on artistic concerns that do not correspond to a single established medium,
and operating within a framework that questions, extends and dissolves established
oppositions (between real and illusion, between the cultural and the natural, between the
physical and the digital and between the built and the non-built), AR can be
problematised in terms of the ‘expanded field.’ The description of the expanded field by
Krauss (1985) works very much in favour of defining augmented space as a hybrid entity
which, while refusing clear categorisations, reveals the possibility of a distinct domain of
art practice and discourse. For Krauss (1985, p.284), the modernist category of sculpture
is suspended between a set of oppositions (not landscape and not architecture), but within
an expanded field of discussion other categories emerge themselves the product of other
possible combinations (between landscape and not landscape, between architecture and
not architecture and between landscape and architecture): marked sites, axiomatic
structures and site-construction, respectively.
As potentially one of these ‘differently structured possibilities’, as Krauss (1985) puts
it, AR would easily fit into an expanded field, but another pair of oppositions should be
added – between cinema and not cinema – since, while AR pre-supposes a media image
in its composition, it refuses, however, any appropriation of the cinematic mode.
While this latter observation would necessitate a whole separate discussion, a few
arguments to support this assertion should be, however, noted. In AR the real space
(‘installationist space’) itself is used as a projection ‘surface’– an unstable receptacle that
stands in contrast with the fixed, clear delimited surface of the cinema screen. With
regard to content, AR’s image is not a ‘ready-made’ presentation for the user, as in most
cases of cinema, but it functions rather as an aesthetic and behavioural provocation; in
fact, the very existence of the image and, as a consequence, of the augmented space itself,
is conditioned by the active user. At the aesthetic level, it should be mentioned that, in
AR, the screen is no longer a neutral, static surface, a barrier between two realms, as in
cinema, but rather an active element that links two different worlds – real and digital. Nor
is its form the same: the display used in AR systems is rarely the ‘classical’ rectangular
 Intermediary zones: augmented space between real and digital 309

frame; instead, the AR screen is a mobile, viewer-engaging device created for close
interaction (head mounted displays or interactive projection-based screens). Unlike
cinema, AR subjects the screen to complex re-articulations: the screen becomes a
transparent threshold, an active instrument, a dialogical site, more and more internalised
by the user. The narrative of the cinematic mode is now replaced by an open-ended
‘story’, in which the user plays a major role. Of course, this transformation is not the
privilege of AR, but the way in which AR ‘individualises’ the narrative in spatial terms
ensures AR a special position in rejecting traditional cinematic condition. Operating such
radical shifts at so many levels, AR seems to illustrate what Manovich (2005) describes
as “the key effect of a computer revolution: substitution of every constant by a variable”.
If Manovich (2005) suggested in the conclusion of his essay “Poetics of Augmented
Space” that “the next logical step [is] to consider the ‘invisible’ space of electronic data
flows as substance rather than just a void”, I would push this idea further and consider the
potential status of augmented space as representation. The age-old pattern of a dialectical
relationship between the real and appearances placed representation in the middle.
Augmented space collapses such a dialectic and refuses to articulate relationships of
subordination between real and fictional: it refuses the logic of ‘either–or’ exclusions
(what is apparent is not real and what is real is not apparent) imposing instead the model
of balanced opportunities, where a representation can be equally part of the real, while
pertaining to appearance. Augmented space complexifies in fact these accounts of
spatiality, the real and the virtual, proposing its own category, one that can be further
analysed in terms of representation and medium.

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Notes
1
The ideas of disclosure and ‘unconcealment’ are used by Heidegger (1993) in relationship with
truth (aletheia). They refer to something (being, or political identity, or work of art) that not only
becomes manifest but also comes into being. See ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Heidegger
(1993).
2
It should be added also that, despite the general use of the term in strict association with electronic
media, ‘virtual’ does not essentially mean digital. As Friedberg (2006) correctly remarks, “before
the digital age, there was virtuality – painterly, photographic, cinematic and televisual – and its
aesthetics and visual systems cannot be reduced simply to information. (…) Once the term
‘virtual’ is free from its enforced association with the ‘digital’, it can more accurately operate as a
marker of an ontological, not media-specific, property” (Friedberg, 2003, p.11) Grau (2003), too,
in his book Virtual Art, From Illusion to Immersion, did a great job untying the links between
‘virtual’ and digital immersive technology.

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