A framework for cloud aesthetics in mixed realities

Augmentation of urban space generates mixed realities; hybrid spaces that emerge from ecologies of virtual and actual signs and entities. Lévy characterises ‘the virtual as a problematic complex’ attached to events, places and objects that ‘invoke a process of resolution: actualisation’. The augmentation of cities reconcile repositories of data with the world that generated them by ‘actualising’ the data in situ; often making the experience of the city more game-like. Mixed realities are made possible via processes of machine vision in augmented reality software. A fiducial marker, often a material object located in space equally visible to machines and humans, tethers a cloud of data to its location connecting flows of information and players. The aesthetics and multiplicity of meaning in these markers is explored via a series of public artworks in Ogaki, Istanbul and Adelaide that connect street art, formal abstraction, augmented reality and game design. Connections between Lévy’s flattening of the virtual / actual hierarchy will be compared with Object-Orientated Philosophy originating in speculative realism. This comparison is centered upon the ways in which machine and human factors play equal roles in the construction of meaning such as in Bogost’s ‘unit operations’ and Galloway’s ‘gamic actions’. This will provide a framework for analysing the dynamics, systems and aesthetics that emerge in mixed realities that blend fiducial markers, digital entities, human players and public space in clouds of data.

Troy Innocent explores the multiplicity of codes in the contemporary mediascape, exploring connections between language and reality. His work invites people to play in worlds that emerge from transmedia ecologies–complex systems of virtual and actual signs and entities. He has developed a unique aesthetic vocabulary that spans a hybrid practice that traverses interaction, design, code, sculpture, animation, sound, and installation.

Innocent co-founded the digital arts collective Cyber Dada in 1989 and through pioneering works such as Idea-ON>! (1992) contributed to the Australian new media arts practice during the 90s. He has exhibited and participated in international festivals, exhibition and symposia including Ars Electronica in 1992 and 2004.

Innocent’s recent public art practice manifests in mixed realities, such as an interactive sculpture garden entitled Colony (2008), Urban Codemakers (2010), and noemaflux, an ongoing work that has appeared on the streets of Ogaki, Instanbul, and Adelaide. Innocent is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery.