barcode

Description (in English)

Ethereal Landscapes is an interactive computer artwork that employs language in the form of barcodes as the interface between a physical object and a virtual space. The user is immersed in a generative video and audio database synchronized in real-time through scanning the barcodes on each page of the photographic artists’ book. This collaborative piece challenges traditional notions of the book-object (as static and non-aural), and of video/audio (as passive and linear) by integrating the interactivity of turning a book’s pages with projected moving images and sound.

Mirroring the interconnectedness of the formal level, Ethereal Landscapes investigates the relations between life as seen on a biological level and our quotidian human experience. The images from the book are referenced throughout the video; their combination with found and created sounds entwine together in a poetic arc around the processes of life, the passage of time and our un-deniable mortality.

(Source: Artists' description for ELO_AI)

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Technical notes

User Directions: Scan the barcode on each of the book’s pages to trigger video/audio. Pages can be read & scanned successively or in a non-linear progression. Scanning the title page provides author information and the barcode at the book’s end summons a ten-minute sequenced video.

By Audun Andreassen, 3 April, 2013
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Abstract (in English)

The objective of this paper is to describe the potentialities of Mobile Tagging as a tool for increasing and spreading the effects of Mixed Realities in Electronic Literature. In this sense, we will start introducing the main concepts and some examples of Mixed Realities followed by the concepts and examples of Mobile Tagging, showing that they are connected and benefit each other and can benefit eLit as well. Mixed Reality (or MR) refers to the fusion of the physical and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-­‐exist and interact in real time. On the other hand, mobile tagging is the process of reading a 2D barcode using a mobile device camera. Allowing the encryption of URLs in the barcodes, the mobile tagging can add a digital and/or online layer to any physical object, providing so several levels of mixed realities related to that object. Although Mixed Realities technologies have already existed for decades, in the past they were very expensive. Recently, mobile devices have also become tools for mixed realities. Due their pervasiveness, their potentiality for increasing the dissemination of mixed realities is enormous and can be leveraged by mobile tagging. Since mobile tags are simple tags that can be placed on virtually any place, physical object or person, added to the fact that the cell phones with cameras have become a very inexpensive and common device, the mobile tagging process can be said as one of the easiest and simplest ways to create mixed realities. The uses of mobile tagging and the several levels of mixed realities have applications in many areas going from medicine and engineering to literature and arts. Mobile Tags work like physical links to the web, allowing so that virtually anything can be part of an expanded mixed reality environment, including printed books, e-­‐books, poetry and any kind of text. This paper/presentation will use examples in the fields of art and literature to illustrate the functionality of the mobile tagging to create mixed realities.

(Source: Author's abstract for ELO_AI)