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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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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As the summer continues, so does the Layar-sponsored augmented reality design class being taught in California to eager design students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. To give you a closer look at the class, here’s another video into which you can sink your teeth.

Anyone who knows Layar and follows this blog knows our outspoken co-founder Maarten Lens-FitzGerald gives talks all over the globe on a somewhat regular basis. However, you may not have seen a talk quite like this from Maarten before.

To kick off the design class’ semester, Maarten provided an introduction of Layar, the company’s history and where it stands today, some examples of the platform’s capabilities as well as a look into the future and where Layar thinks augmented reality is headed.

So check out the video below of Maarten’s talk. It’s a quick snapshot that summarizes many key and interesting points surrounding Layar and augmented reality.

This summer Layar is sponsoring the first ever college course on augmented reality design in the United States.

The sessions will be held at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and will be administered by none other than legendary Sci-Fi author, futurist and AR guru Bruce Sterling. The class will meet for thirteen weekly 5-hour sessions, and will be co-taught by ACCD professor Guillaume Wolf.

Students will mainly be involved in building augmented reality projects for their design portfolios. “I’m going to encourage them to aim a little ahead of the state-of-the-art in today’s AR,” says Bruce Sterling. “In other words, while they familiarize themselves with what is out in the practice today, they need to design for hardware and software capacities 18 to 24 months in the future.”

The class will cover a wide gamut of AR related topics, including:

• AR in theory and practice.


• AR trendspotting.


• AR outside the handset.


• AR as an app, add-on or control interface for other services.


• AR in the art world.


• AR in the city.


• AR in the Futurist Quadrant.

The class got underway last month, and Layar’s Maarten Lens-FitzGerald and Gene Becker were on hand to help kick things off. We’ll have some more to share with you as the summer progresses, but to for starters, have a look at Gene’s opening talk on the importance of user experience and interaction design in augmented reality!

As we begin to wrap up our series of videos from Augmented Reality Event 2011, it seems fitting to feature now the closing event of ARE. This year the conference was punctuated by a “fireside” chat (there was no flame in sight) with two science fiction authors whose work has had a profound impact on the augmented reality industry: Bruce Sterling and Vernor Vinge.

Vinge is the author of numerous science fiction novels including Rainbows End, and is a former professor of computer science and math at San Diego State University. His work and vision of the future has greatly influenced those developing augmented reality technology, including right here at Layar.

Bruce Sterling needs no further introduction to those familiar with Layar and this blog, but just in case, Bruce is a sci-fi/cyberpunk author who has similarly been highly influential in the direction the AR industry. He has come out to speak at several AR events and is currently teaching a Layar-sponsored summer session on AR design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

That said, any chance to hear one of these brilliant minds speak is certainly a privledge, let alone hearing them both at once. So here it is, our latest video from ARE 2011: Vernor Vinge and Bruce Sterling sitting down for a friendly chat to close out the event.