For the past several weeks, I have been researching augmented reality with the aim of identifying some of its distinguishing features—“distinguishing” being the operative and tricky word here. (more…)
Mapping the Night
In the early fall of 1975, Susan Alexander Speeth was stabbed to death when walking home alone at night. Her body was found less than a block from her home. In the aftermath of Speeth’s death, feminists cried the slogan “Take Back the Night.” The call remains a rallying call...
Anxiety? There’s an App for That
My students often have to give presentations at the end of the semester, and public speaking is something that genuinely terrifies a lot of people. In addition to building a supportive, low-judgment environment, I try to give them a few tips for public speaking and how to approach it with...
Augmented Reality and Smartphones: Friends or Foes?
Pardon the spatial-rhetorics wordplay here, but I am increasingly getting the sense that the topic at the center of this locative media research group—augmented reality—feels simultaneously like unfamiliar and familiar territory. I have spent a substantial amount of time researching and reflecting on locative media, especially thanks to my time...
Mapping Patriarchy
At the center of feminist politics we often find physical spaces. Consider abortion clinics, prisons, restrooms, universities, and homes: each space a site for a struggle for safety and autonomy, each space an example of how patriarchy uses space to project an illusion of stability. An ideology that casts women inferior depends on the...
Does Augmented Reality Diminish our Humanity?
Augmented reality, still in the nascent stages of technological development but quickly gaining traction, attempts to alter the way we interact with the world as we know it. Ideally, devices and apps that help to “augment” our reality will help us accomplish tasks that we wouldn't be able to accomplish otherwise....
Introducing our Spring 2016 Research Priorities: Augmented Reality
Like last semester, our Spring 2016 Priority in Locative Media is Augmented Reality. Mobile interfaces—including but not limited to smartphones and wearable devices—allow information and sensory experience to be layered over the physical-geographic world, mediating and supplementing users’ perceptions of ‘reality’, space, and place. Given the increased prevalence of such technologies and intense...
Finally Augmenting the UT South Lawn Statues
At the start of the 2015 fall semester, we (the Augmented Reality Research Group) sat down to decide on our project. Several recent events in the news over the past year had influenced our decision. On June 17th, Dylann Roof, a white twenty-one-year-old male, had just shot and killed nine...
Crowd Sourcing Augmented Reality
Recently a new augmented reality app called Capsule came to my attention. It is intended to be an augmented reality social network based on location. Having an unique moment while walking somewhere in the city? Take a photo or video, put it into a capsule and drop at the location where...
Digital Lesson Plan Open House: Augmented Reality
To Our Usual Readers, In lieu of a conventional blog post, and in preparation for the 2015 DWRL Digital Lesson Plan Open House, this post summarizes a lesson on augmenting a physical space to better understand arguments about the rhetoric of space -- in this case, the DWRL itself (how meta!). See...