Guerrilla Art - Smith

The Guerrilla Art book that we read was actually very helpful. As I was going through it I was thinking about how I could use some of the techniques and make it augmented. There was one idea about leaving little inspirational cut outs for people in random places, which got me thinking about augmented things to have little messages. This lead me to thinking about how I've seen messages written on bathroom mirror saying, "You're beautiful" which got me thinking about maybe augmenting things for adolescent girls. Or even boys. To try and help with self-esteem issues. Or maybe augmenting things for High School students.
I'm going to be a teacher and so I'm taking an EDF class about adolescent growth and development and self-esteem is a big thing for adolescence and if we can encourage girls to stop being so cruel to each other and to look out for one another that might change how girls grow up. We could also try to augment things boys see too so that they stop using the term "you blank like a girl" or using "girl" as a punch line.

Reading the guerrilla art book and Smith’s comments about legality made me wonder about the legal issues we might run into. I know we talked a little bit about companies putting their work out there and we aren’t changing anything, but are new laws and copyrights going to be written to try and stop people from augmenting things? Smith also talked about guerrilla art not being permanent, but does our ability to augment things change that and make it so that it will be permanent in a way? It seems that some of the fun of guerrilla art is the fact that it disappears or is taken by someone, but with augmented reality there’s not the same uniqueness or impermanence.

Also, these ideas were really cool and I think it’s awesome that people leave books in public places and grow plants in random places. I just hope that our society doesn’t become so technology based that we lose the interaction with people these types of arts describe. You might not get the same out of watching people look at your art, because you might not know if people can see your art or not. I also feel like the secrecy behind the whole adventure is kind of taken out because you have to tell people about it so they have the right app in order to see your augmented reality. I don’t want to slap augmented reality because I think it has been really fun, but I also think that for this guerrilla art it might be better to leave it to the other mediums and to not get augmented reality mixed up in it.  

AR Game Play

I started out playing the AR basketball game that was on the Facebook page, but you had to have the sheet of paper for it so everyone in the class couldn't play. It would also be hard to play anywhere because you would need the paper with you. However, I found a basketball game that you didn't need the paper for and it would just be a floating basketball hoop. I liked that one a lot better because you can just do it anywhere and you also have the ability to move the hoop around and make it a little harder for yourself.

The make it rain app is basic, but it's actually really interesting because the money looks realistic and it shows the potential that AR has and how realistic it can look. It's also fun to pretend to have money. I showed this to my step mom and dad, because they have a lot of money and it was fun interacting with them with this AR game and I actually got to talk to them about what we are doing in class and the things that AR has the possibility of doing in the future.

I tried playing an Astroid AR game, but the overlay was in space and not in the physical world so it was kind of a let down. It would've been fun to shot things with the classroom as the backdrop. It just goes to show that a clear definition of AR is still not understood by some people designing games.

The Ghostbusters AR game was really interesting, especially since you have to actually get up and walk around to find ghosts. It definitely makes the game much more interactive than just sitting on the couch and shooting basketballs in the hovering hoop. It's definitely away to get active with the game.

Interacting with Augmented Reality

This weeks chapters were all about content and interacting with Augmented Reality. The chapter with interacting with augment reality brought up some concerns for me. Our generation has already been labeled as the generation that can't focus and are so immersed in technology that we can't disengage. So I have concerns that AR could become another technology that people can't disengage from and it ends up being a disadvantage rather than an advantage. However, I'm going to be an English teacher in high school and AR might be helpful, but it could also be a distraction. When I was visiting my old high school I saw that all the students had Mac airs and they were getting on the internet throughout class and not paying attention. AR could be a fun way to get students excited about writing, but it could also be yet another distraction for them. You mentioned in class that AR print is a way that you could show movie clips and stuff in papers, which I thought would be so cool for students to be able to show something, but does that take away their ability to explain things in a written format? Does there become a reliance on this form of technology that students lose the ability to communicate with their peers without the technology.
I also wonder about the health effects as well as the safety concerns. I saw that video that was posted on the Facebook wall about the motorcycle helmet, but does the rider become focused on the images appearing on his helmet visor and loses attention of the road and could possibly crash? Does this lead to augmenting windshields in the future and possibly causing accidents or is our attention able to be divided so well that it won't matter. AR opens up so many possibilities, but it could also lead to some many disadvantages. Will we become a society that can only operate in the virtual or augmented world instead of the physical one? I mean it's a possibility especially if the Google glasses become a popular and affordable thing.
I think AR has a lot of possibilities and the many ways to interact with it could save lives as well as teach, especially for people who learn better with hands on things, but I think AR is a long way from becoming an everyday activity. It helps to have this class teaching us about it because it lets us think about some of these concerns and could come up with ways to implement change in the AR systems. Such as finding ways to keep kids from getting distracted and actually using them at the right times. When you first introduced the app there were several students looking throughout the classroom for things augmented and it was kind of distracting while we were trying to listen to you talk about it. So it's things like that that could lead to a disruption rather than it being beneficial. Although I think this issues can be resolved once the technology catches up with the ideas.