A Journey into Artworks: Storytelling in Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality

Abstract

The paper aims to show Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) artworks are increasingly taking the form of walking tours across the city. These installations in urban space transform the viewer into an experiencer. Indeed such artworks consist in perceptual environments, which give new menanings to known places thanks to virtual objects. They can elicit a strong sense of presence into the visitor, who is free to build different paths related to the artwork both in time and space, using her own mobile devices. AR an MR artworks use immersive, multimedia, and interactive storytelling, which modifies everyday context affordances. The actual environment results from the intertwining of the physical and the digital. Artists like Keiichi Matsuda, in HYPER-REALITY (2016), and Magali Barbé, in Strange Beasts (2017), have imagined the most dystopian and alarming aspects that could emerge from new virtual technologies. However, AR and MR artworks reveal potentialities impossible to obtain through any other medium. The article will discuss some relevant examples such as the [AR]T project (2019), organized by the New Museum of New York and Apple, Actual Reality (2019) by Hito Steyerl and MNEMOSCOPIO (2020), by Emilio Vavarella.