One of our favorite use cases for Augmented Reality is artistic expression and the ability to make digital statements on top of places and things in the real world. 

Gilt City is artist John Goto’s response to the ongoing global financial crisis expressed in Augmented Reality around London’s Bank of England.

In his latest collaboration with developer Matthew Leach, Goto uses montaging techniques to show “marginal characters isolated in the bustling commercial centre” to draw attention to the widening income gap between the rich and poor.

If you launch the Gilt City layer near the statue of Wellington outside the Bank of England, you’ll see a motley cast of characters including a banker, a naked man, a bullfighter, a drug dealer and several other men of varying occupations asking for money.

As the user, you decide who to give money to and who to zap! If you choose to give money to the person, the black-and-white figure regains its color. If you choose to zap the person, the figure explodes, never to pander to you again (well, until you relaunch the layer, anyway).

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Throughout the summer, we’ve covered some of the highlights of Bruce Sterling’s Layar-sponsored AR design class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

As all good things must come to an end, so has this class, but not without some impressive final student projects! You can read all our posts related to the Design Class here.

This video was made by students Josh Finklea, Nico Sala and Jason Yeh for a concept called See/k. The See/k concept is intended for a store experience and was developed for a high culture fashion label as a means to create interest in the release of a limited edition perfume. Check it out!

See\k from joshua Finklea on Vimeo.

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Here at Layar, we like to stay busy creating new concepts, improving existing products, and sharing our hopes, dreams and coolest new endeavors with our community.

Some days we do all of these things at once—and last Thursday (Sept. 1) was one of those days.

First, we hosted a webinar for developers interested in the Creation Challenge, and had a great turnout! You can download the audio file for the September 1 Creation Challenge webinar as well as a PDF of the presentation here.

If you missed last week’s webinar, do not despair! We’re hosting another one, this time an Introduction to Layar Vision, this Friday, September 9. Register now!

After the webinar, we kicked off another Augmented Reality Thursday (ART), a monthly meetup we host to share news, exchange ideas and visions, and meet others interested in Augmented reality. 

Check out this video of last week’s ART presentations from Layar Co-founder and General Manager Maarten Lens FitzGerald, Layar Research and Development’s Michael Hofmann and renowned ARtist Sander Veenhof. These fellas show off some cool new Layar concepts!

Throughout the summer, we’ve covered some of the highlights of Bruce Sterling’s Layar-sponsored AR design class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

As all good things must come to an end, so has this class, but not without some impressive final student projects! Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be sharing videos of these projects as well as footage from last week’s class presentations with Layar strategist Gene Becker making a guest appearance to offer comments and feedback. You can read all our posts related to the Design Class here.

These next two videos were made by students Shi Jie (CJ) Lim, Shih-Hao (Tony) Chiu and Ailun (Karen) Chiu for a mobile app concept called Dobu Dobu. The first video is a demo of the Dobu Dobu virtual pet-making layer (not yet public), and the second is a concept video for a magical 3D Augmented Reality experience centered around interacting with your virtual pets. 

Perhaps Dobu Dobu is the Tamagochi of the future…

Dobu Dobu Prototype Video from Zooproot on Vimeo.

Dobu Dobu from Zooproot on Vimeo.

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Throughout the summer, we’ve covered some of the highlights of Bruce Sterling’s Layar-sponsored AR design class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

As all good things must come to an end, so has this class, but not without some impressive final student projects! Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be sharing videos of these projects as well as footage from last week’s class presentations with Layar strategist Gene Becker making a guest appearance to offer comments and feedback. You can read all of our posts about the AR Design class here.

This first video is for a concept called “enlitenar”, and it features students Ryan D’Orazi and Jennifer Rosetto (as well as a cameo from Bruce Sterling and his wife, author and filmmaker Jasmina Tešanović), who use Augmented Reality to cross over to the spiritual dimension.

In addition to this otherworldly concept video, the students created an enlitenar layer (currently still in testing) with Hoppala that uses audio and visual elements to facilitate a connection between physical reality and the invisible forces that influence everyday life.

If that sounds a bit heavy for you, we’ll leave it at this: if you’ve ever wanted to see Bruce Sterling perform an initiation ceremony dressed as a cyberpunk cult leader (goodness knows WE have), watch this video!

enlitenar: augmented spirituality reality from RYAN DORAZI on Vimeo.

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