Adam Whittsell
AR – possibilities
The important things to think about is having a good understanding of the mediums possibilities. So, I would say like there are ... face filters, that augment your face in different ways, or face masks, or what ever it might be. Those filters could be in a mobile phone, or they could be projected behind, or projected on the actors on the stage. So, that’s the face augmentation. Then there’s the full body that’s coming more and more because of recent developments in AI (Artificial Intelligence). So, you can have a full body augmented suit in the subway or mask, or it could be anything. So, that’s one part of it. That also means that you can track motion. So, if you doing something that involves a lot of motion, it could be an interesting thing. And those can feed other things. Then you have projections which could be projection mapped related to the space you are in. The stage you are on. Those could also be projected on actors and on the stage. So, those are kind of, I would argue the three main things. So, you can create something here and now on the stage. You can create something that augments face or the full body. So, that’s what I would think of as ways to think of the medium and its possibilities. And the more you understand how you can translate things and start to think in those terms the more you will get out of it. I’ve been in some collaborations with artists that were ... they were very stuck in their old ways of thinking and they just want to add something in the space, but didn’t have a very clear idea, or a clear  idea how to translate their craft into the medium. I think this is something you need to do, that’s the homework you need to do before doing anything. So, I think it’s very important that you do your homework in the sense of, you’re super interested in doing this. You want to find a way to use this medium in your sense. Maybe you don’t have the exact idea of how to make it. But you have ideas on what you want to do with it. Start thinking of the whole world as a magical place where digital things and physical things work in the same space. So, if you just think of the real world as more magical in the sense that you can have a floating object, you can augment your face, you can do whatever you want. Then you don’t even have to think digitally in a sense. You can just think creatively of what you can do in the space. And that’s how I start, how I think about these things because it kind of unlocks the way you are thinking. That it’s not just digital or physical, but more of a hybrid form. Something I think is really important, and that I see a lot of in the culture, artist space is that ... a lot of projects in this space start to develop their own platforms. I don’t if it’s because of how the grants work or whatever it is but they make they make their own VR platform, their own AR platform that you can sign up to. And please don’t do that. There are so many good platforms out there. Don’t make another one because, just the technical staff you need to have in place to have a platform that seems current and that is worth something ... you know it’s going to get old in three months. Then you’re going to have these three technicians on staff that need to develop this platform. So, if someone suggests this to you – let’s not work with Snapchat or whatever, or a standardized AR platform, let’s make another platform, for this – be very, very cautious of that. I would say that it requires a very big cultural institution to run their own platform. And you won’t have the shareability. So if you make something with Snap for instance that a lot of people have, or on web AR, where you can just bring up your phone and do something, it’s shareable. You can use it forever. It’s built on standards that are ... someone else is taking care of that they are always modern. And it’s instantly shareable. It’s the same thing as not making this black box on stage you make it on the web so you can share it. And you can take advantage of the digital reach.