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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Layar’s favorite science fiction author and “Guardian Seer of Augmented Reality” Bruce Sterling has just crossed over into the Layar developer realm.

As “Visionary in Residence” at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, Bruce felt the best way to inspire his students to create immersive AR experiences was to create one himself because, as he said, “Sometimes it’s easiest to teach by doing.”

Obviously an Augmented Reality visionary like Bruce Sterling wasn’t going to make a layer to find ATMs or restaurants, but little did we know his finished project would augment an underground, offline media network perfectly aligned with the tenets of AR!

Last week Bruce revealed the Dead Drops layer to the world through his blog, which enabled a new wave of discovery for Berlin-based media artist Aram Bartholl‘s Dead Drops project.

Dead drops are USB flash drives embedded into walls, buildings and curbs that are accessible to everyone and located in public space. Anyone can add to and take from a dead drop, or create their own and add its location to the website. The result of this project is an anonymous, offline peer-to-peer file sharing network.

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The Layar-sponsored augmented reality design class being taught this summer in California is still truckin’ along, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to share another video from the class.

This time we have a presentation by Layar artist Sander Veenhof, who is known for using Layar in his augmented reality art projects like the Pentagon/White House Infiltr.AR and the Museum of Modern Art AR “Uninvited” Exhibit. In this presentation to the students at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, Sander explains his history as a digital artist using augmented reality, as well as his idea of “invisible augmented reality”.

He also talks about how he uses the term “Free-D” (instead of 3D) because technology has opened up a limitless world for expression. As for what exactly “invisible augmented reality” is, you’ll just have to watch his presentation to find out. So check out the video below to see Sander’s talk in front of the AR Design Class in Pasadena.

Today at Layar HQ in Amsterdam we had a special treat as sci-fi writer, futurist and all-around AR guru Bruce Sterling graced us with his presence and wisdom. 

As Bruce says, a healthy part of the growth of any important industry is the proliferation of education on the subject. Bruce will soon be teaching a class in augmented reality, which we think is a great step towards to the popularization of the technology. 

Bruce reminds us that today, it is very common to see courses, majors and professors focused around newer subjects like video games - so why not get the ball rolling on AR education?

We also bestowed upon Mr. Sterling the noble title of Guardian Seer of Augmented Reality, and presented him with a fancy trophy. 

 To hear more about the class and Bruce’s thoughts on the current state of the industry, check out the video below!