Code switching in mixed realities.

Abstract

The codes used in augmented reality (AR) systems may act as signifiers of an alternative reality in themselves, prior to any technological reading. Mixed realities in urban settings are complex media ecologies that are often traversed in a transmedial manner by players and participants. Making AR markers a significant part of the urban landscape, by aestheticising them, results in an intervention into public space that signifies the presence of an alter-native world situated within the real. Recent projects such as Urban Codemakers and noemaflux explore connections between formal abstraction, street art, pervasive gaming and virtual art, creating mixed realities with hybrid aesthetics, and multiple layers of meaning.