I came across something totally new today, augmented reality street art by Edward Von Longus. Its to celebrate the 100th year of the artists home country, Estonia, and is part of the London Festival of Architecture running from 1st-30th June. First you have to download a free app to your smart phone, then find some of Edward's artworks, and marvel as they kind of come to life. Its not quite Princess Leia hologram video messages, but that now seems only a short step away.
Under a bridge on Glasshouse Walk in Vauxhall, there are a number of images like this:
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You start up the (R)estart Reality app on your phone and point it at the picture. I'm holding my phone pointed at artwork with one hand, and filming the images on my phone using my camera with my other hand, while standing out in the road far back enough to get it all on screen....has anyone risk assessed this? This street art lark is getting more and more complicated, it does feel for a second like an elaborate Russian spy plot to get me run over.
Anyway, that image suddenly moves as you can see here:
I like it. Here's another.
Still image:
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And it lives.....it reminds me of Terry Gilliam and Monty Python
And there is another one under the Bridge by Vauxhall Underground/Bus Depot.
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And during this one I did a full on double take. Firstly the women appear to be taking selfies and then transmogrifying (c/o Calvin and Hobbs
) into other women. Not only that, I discovered that even though I am filming the image on my phone just a few inches from the camera, if anyone walks between the phone and the image, so out of camera shot, behind the phone, they still show up in the image. So there is some sort of continuous interaction between image and phone, its not just playing some pre-recorded image. I have no idea about this sorcery, but when the bloke walks through the shot in this, I shoot him a startled glance as I ascertain if he is actually real
It all went a bit like the Matrix for a minute there
More info here:
https://london.mfa.ee/vauxhall-welcomes-augmented-reality-street-art-by-edward-von-longus/