With the widespread use of smart devices and the democratization of augmented reality (AR) technologies, curators, artists, and activists are increasingly using AR apps and publishing tools to layer digital content onto material spaces. Unlike virtual reality (VR), which immerses a user in a digital world, AR combines both the digital and physical through the layering of digital content onto a user’s surroundings. This layering technique is an appealing and potentially transformative aspect of AR technology as it allows artists and activists to create the illusion that virtual content is seamlessly located in a physical location, thereby further enabling creators and users to subvert the normative logics of public space, challenge dominant narratives, and experience environments differently from how they were intended. 

In this course, we will engage with a variety of AR artworks and interventions to examine how contemporary artists and activists are creating interactive AR art experiences that inspire perceptual shifts, raise questions, and further social change. We will read scholarly works on AR art as strategies for social justice, and explore critical issues related to place-based AR art, including ethics, legalities, ephemerality, accessibility, respecting cultural protocols, challenging colonial narratives, abstraction, and queering objects and space. 

This is a hybrid studio/studies course in which students will be introduced to a variety of technologies for creating digital media for AR as well as a variety of AR authoring and publishing tools. For the final project, students will create and critically analyze their own AR art.