How to overdose on augmented-reality

Courtesy of a pointer by Mike Aikins (@AussiMike), came across a brilliant yet scary pair of videos about just how far ‘augmented reality’ might intrude into our lives in the relatively near future. The two videos were created by architecture-student Keiichi Matsuda:

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.

First, here’s the original version of the video: a very ordinary first-person view of someone in the kitchen of a small, cramped flat (presumably in Britain, judging by the power-sockets), engaged in the mundane task of making a cup of tea. (The reasons for the strange hand-gestures will become apparent in the second video.)

domestic robocop: original footage from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

And here’s the same footage with an overdose of ‘augmented reality’ applied…

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

I love the detail and precision here: the clock and kettle-timer ticking away, the banal music, the equally-banal recipe and voice-over instructions. And the subtly ironic sense of humour, too: one of the messages (at 01:00) asks plaintively “Anyone up for a RL [real-life] meeting this weekend?”; the departure from the kitchen is signalled (at 01:30) by a red-flashing warning on the ‘Liquid waste’ bar on the personal-status indicator.

I can see that augmented-reality does have its value, but this is definitely not a future I’d like to live in!