The 54th Venice Biennale Art Exhibition opens tomorrow, and just in case you’re not familiar, it has been among the top cultural events in the world for over a century, specializing in the avant-garde and showcasing the latest trends in contemporary art. With an historically “high art” reputation like that, it’s practically begging to be co-opted by guerilla Layar ARtists.

So if you make it out to Venice this weekend, or at least before the end of November, here are a few art installments that only the “Layar elite” can see:

Manifest.AR Intervention The Cyber ARtist group returns with a series of eight “uninvited” art layers (see the full list here) consisting of their own pavilions that are actually competing with the “physical reality” pavilions via Sander Veenhof’s Battling Pavilions layer.

The Don Pigeon Placed in Venice’s famous San Marco square, The Don Pigeon stands tall among the flock of real-life pigeons for a unique photo opportunity. According to its creators, “Forget the Biennale, forget the Guggenheim, this is what you want to see this summer!”

Where’s Franco As a modern-day renaissance man, you can be sure that James Franco will be participating in a variety of activities at the Biennale. With the Where’s Franco layer, you can spot him in nine locations throughout the exhibition and even cozy up to him for a photo (let’s face it, this is the closest you’ll ever get).

Image from the Gradually Melt the Sky exhibition invitation.

Last week we wrote about two Augmented Reality art shows opening this month in Philadelphia. Well, East Coasters, you can add two more to the list.

Some of Layar’s most innovative and active “ARtists” in the US, including Mark Skwarek, Will Pappenheimer and John Craig Freeman (along with other, internationally based, members of Manifest.AR like Sander Veenhof) kick off a new exhibition this Friday at Devotion Gallery in Brooklyn called Gradually Melt the Sky.

The exhibition runs from April 8 - May 1, and featured ARtwork includes a visualization of water contamination in the Williamsburg/Bushwick neighborhoods, a “Parade to Hope” and a re-creation of the 1989 Tiananman Protest.

The ARtists will then move these and other works to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) from April 22 - May 8 for the Boston Cyberarts Festival. If you’re in the Boston area for the event, you can access the mobile site and ManifestAR layer here.

An artists’ rendering of the Twitter balloon inside the Oval Office.

Layar is nothing without its creative and highly-skilled developer community, so we thought it would be cool to include some blog posts from the mouth of one of the most renowned Layar developers/dreamers/artists we know.

Sander Veenhof (SNDRV) is the man behind some of the coolest and most talked about layers including Biggar, The Game of Life, and the MoMA AR Exhibition. We asked Sander to write about his latest collaboration with Mark Skwarek, a guerilla AR campaign that launched Friday, February 25 (Stay tuned for video coverage from this event as well).

Tweeting to Obama but not getting through? Since February 25th you can now reach him right at his desk in the Oval Office. A virtual Twitter balloon has been placed inside the White House and another one infiltrated the Pentagon using the GPS-based Augmented Reality browser, Layar. The balloons display the latest tweets containing the hashtags #OvalOfficeChat or #PentagonChat respectively.

The placement of the two Augmented Reality balloons was the mission of infiltr.AR, a live augmented reality infiltration event orchestrated from a temporary command centre at Club Karlsson in Amsterdam. It’s the latest experiment in crossing physical borders by members of the Manifest.AR artist group, best known for their previous infiltration project: an unofficial guerrilla exhibition inside the MoMA NYC last year in October.

An artists’ rendering of the Twitter balloon inside the Pentagon press room.

The virtual Twitter balloons inside the White House and the Pentagon can be seen ‘for real’ using Layar. Search and open the layer “INFILTRAR.” When not inside the two buildings, an ‘artist impression’ of the augmented space will appear, including an actual live copy of the Twitter balloon.

Since Manifest.AR members do not have press passes, and most probably never ever will, we are highly curious to see any screenshots of the virtual public message board inside the Pentagon press room, so journalists, give it your best shot! (And Tweet it hashtagged #pentagonchat please).

-Sander Veenhof and Mark Skwarek of Manifest.AR