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Most people who keep abreast of technology are aware of augmented reality. That's technologies that look like this:
This stuff is really cool. I mean, it's incredibly useful to be able to get directions in this fashion, and it's also incredibly neat to imagine the possibilities. Someday, will I walk out of a movie about alien invasion, hold up my phone, and through its viewscreen see the real world overlaid with aliens invading? Probably. I wouldn't be surprised!
Augmented reality, though, is about much more than just holding up a phone and looking "through" its screen. Producers of ARGs - alternate reality games - have long understood what augmented reality really is. It's what happens when you look around you and see your everyday world transformed. When you're playing an ARG, your understanding of the world shifts. No longer are you simply standing at the bus stop, getting tacos from a lunch truck, or admiring a famous landmark; now you are looking for clues that may be hidden anywhere, reading secret meanings into the passersby, searching public advertisements to see if any of them were placed by a particular company. The world around you has become the site of a story - and it's done so without any technological intervention.
Movies can do this, too, without even the effort of creating an augmented reality game. I live in Boston, and many movies are set there - Good Will Hunting, for example. One of the biggest tourist destinations is the "Cheers pub." People want to go there and feel, for a moment, like they're in the place where "everybody knows your name." Conversely, I couldn't enjoy the movie Legally Blonde when I rewatched it, because a great deal of it is set in a beauty shop near Harvard University. I live near Harvard, and there aren't any beauty shops that are anything like that fictional one. Oh, sure, it's supposed to be a comedy, suspension of disbelief, etc etc - but I secretly wanted to walk around my neighborhood and pretend that I was Elle Woods, and the moment I realized that my Harvard wasn't the same as Legally Blonde's Harvard, the spell was broken.
As a concept, augmented reality is about much more than just technology. Technology can play a great part in it. The "New York Nearest Subway" app is a wonderful idea, and there's a place for it and apps like it in entertainment. But we must never forget the real affordances of geography - the real possibilities of the real world, augmented only by our own minds, our own imaginations.
5 days later:
Hi,
I’m graduated in Cultural Management (Produção Cultural) by UFF and have a special interest in Trasmedia Storyteling and Converge Culture. I found out that you guys are a reference in this field in Brazil and decided to get in touch. As I couldn’t find any contact info I’m leaving a comment here.
Oh.. and about the post. I really think that the most important thing is that people have to be able to relate to the universe you are presenting them so the augmenting reality really seems to be the key to that.
Hope to hear from you, Leo Coura