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 final concept was created by students Ed Schofield, James Goodnight, Drew Roberts and Jesse Merrell.

The JuJu concept is for an app that would use the Layar Player to embed the JuJu layer. The app is designed to enhance nightlife in the Los Angeles area by augmenting bars, clubs and other venues with that night’s DJ/band line-up, a live camera view inside and more.

Take a peek at these three videos and see for yourself!

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Now that the jury session is in full effect deciding which of the 15 finalists will get a piece of the $55,000 prize money, we’re taking this “downtime” opportunity to share a few of the Creation Challenge concepts that we thought were great, but came up just shy of the final 15.

These concepts may not have fit the Challenge criteria as well as some others, but we do believe they hold a lot of potential and hope the developers will continue to build and promote these awesome Layar Vision experiences!

Take at look at these three ”Honorable Mention” concepts for the Layar Creation Challenge.

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The Occupy Wall Street protests quickly spread from New York City to the rest of the United States to the rest of the world, and it’s only fitting they should now occupy Augmented Reality, where neither blockades nor pepper spray and baton-wielding police officers can keep you off of Wall Street. 

Layar developer and Manifest.AR founding member Mark Skwarek has made a global call to activists to make themselves seen and heard in AR, which according to the AR Occupy Wall Street blog, is much more difficult to do in “actual” reality.

“Protesters were not given permits to protest at Wall Street forcing them blocks from the New York Stock Exchange [NYSE]. Wall Street was barricaded off. Only part of the sidewalk was accessible to the public and there was a constant heavy police presence. 

arOCCUPYWALLSTREET takes the protest to the heart of the financial district, placing them directly in front of the NYSE. Augmented reality gives protesters the ability to have a truly global affect on world events.”

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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!

In this video, Bruce Sterling talks about his goals and experience of teaching the first-ever Augmented Reality Design class. His students also comment on their experiences within the class and their views on AR in general.

Read all of our posts related to the design class and watch all of the student project videos here.

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This week marks a first for Layar territory, as developer John Cleater, in collaboration with the Builder’s Association, integrated Layar into their latest project: a multimedia live theater production titled HOUSE / DIVIDED.

The production uses John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath as a narrative backbone, telling contemporary tales of foreclosure by following economic refugees and migrants from two different American eras. 

HOUSE / DIVIDED explores the changing meaning of home, homelessness, and place both in the present moment and in the broader context of the American mythos.

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