"Flaneur Barbican" in Hack the Barbican

Location: Curve Exit, Barbican, London UK
Dates: August 26-31, 2013

"Flaneur Barbican" is a site specific augmented reality installation for the Hack the Barbican residency, August 2013. Fortuitously I just ended the 150th Residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA) leaving with a greater clarity of this installation. In part, I plan to put a room within a room by AR method. The interior of Roberson Dance Studio of ACA will be placed into the Curve Exit interior space of the Barbican.



Using their smart phone or tablet, each visitor to the "Flaneur Barbican" AR installation will look for floating sleeping faces. Touching a face wakes a short performance video.

> > > TOUCH THE CAMEO ABOVE < < <

I have a working prototype now. I plan to share a work-in-progress link to the AR channel soon. The installation AR is coded for the Junaio browser, a FREE download found in Android and Apple iPad/iPhone stores, use "junaio" in your search string. The installation code will become publicly available.

I would like to include more performances from the Barbican locale or wherever. The current AR performers are either movers (dancers) or musicians of the 150th Residency. Interested in adding your's? Please email/DropBox me your performance video, .mov, 10 to 30 seconds; your performance video length, thus file size, is limited by the download bandwidth to the mobile device. It would be really awesome if a submitter(s) made their video in or around the Barbican so later the installation visitor will try to discover the performance location and possibly create her own own mobile phone performance video response. I will review all videos submissions and the engaging ones will get my further formatting and preparation for the AR installation. HINT: I prefer steady video shots using a tripod - - it's only ~15 seconds! IMHO: The zoom lens is only useful to frame a shot, then leave the zoom untouched. OKAY: Challenge me and break the earlier directives. SAMPLE: To give you a taste of what I am looking for touch the floating AR face above. TECHNICAL: The linked movie was shot in the Roberson Dance Studio using a Flip camera and finished with FCP + a QuickTime conversion for AR mobile browser display.

Production code: R112

AR Please Use Other Door

This is an AR Junaio browser screen grab of my augmented reality piece from last night's show Swell Sound & Vision at The Firehouse Space, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The event was organized by Jessica Nissen and Sasha Sumner. Many thanks to Ben Blachnitzky and Felix Bull for their help producing the alpha channel video fire. If you're not in Brooklyn in front of this door sign, then use the show poster below and DIY.

Sneak Peak - tech location review - AR WAR OF 1812

The augmented reality model of the USRC cutter in the 1813 incident is at GPS position mid Hudson River. Crew member Rubin poses to check photo opportunity.


The spirit of Captain James Lawrence appears adjoining his tomb in the Trinity Church yard.


Inflated international (1813) bank notes are floating mid air on Wall Street. The spirit of Cap. Lawrence is strutting down Wall St. celebrating his naval prowess.

Come to Castle Clinton, Battery Park at 2pm on Saturday, April 6, 2013 and co-creator public historian Kathleen Hulser and I will give you a personal tour.

For those who want to sojourn on your own with an iPad/iPhone/Android device, scan this:

junaio Certified Developer

I am now a junaio Certified Developer and you can see my portfolio at stevebull.org/ar/

Everyone Invited

The Bogliasco Foundation
is happy to invite you to participate

INVISIBLE PRESENCE
AR INSTALLATION BY STEVE BULL
14 - 15 April 2012

Bogliasco Foundation, Garden of Villa dei Pini, Via Aurelia 2, Bogliasco (GE)


Programmed for the XIV Settimana della Cultura,
by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivitá Culturali
Press release
Map and Summary

AR Installation Explanation by Elena Zanichelli

inVisible Presence, Garden of Villa dei Pini, The Bogliasco Foundation, Via Aurelia 4, Bogliasco, ITALY.

Organized within the Settimana della Cultura program from 14th until 22nd April 2012

Curated by the Ministero per i beni e le Attivitá Culturali.

"Augmented Reality Busts in the garden of Villa dei Pini"

On the occasion of the celebration of the 15th year of activity of the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Bogliasco Foundation will open the Villa dei Pini's eighteenth century garden to the public. Located close to the Via Aurelia, which follows the track of the ancient Roman road to the town of Ventimiglia and France, the Genoese style garden features paths with breathtaking views of the Mediterranean from a cliff which goes down to a steep rocky seaside. Since its inaugural year, the Linguria Study Center's garden has hosted strange and stimulating encounters, being a location for both meditation and creativity.

inVisible Presence - Augmented Reality Busts, the installation by Steve Bull, explores the unusual intersection between sculpture in public places and the most modern digital technologies. It will guide the public down the garden path to stop in search of inVisible Presence. These presences will be seen only on the screens of the visitors' smart phones or iPads, showing the busts of academics, artists, writers, novelists, choreographers and professors, composers and architects from all over the world. These busts will talk to the visitors about their projects at the Study Center. While literally geo-localized, these traces or presences are superimposed on the reality of the garden, memorializing research work or artistic endeavour that occurred at the Villa dei Pini.

The protagonists of this “encounter hunting” are the visitors themselves, who are invited to explore the garden and interact with it.

The technology used in inVisible Presence overturns the celebratory and "irremovable” aspect of the traditional bust, not only by making the traces of the presences fluid, but also by adding new information that should stimulate (im)probable discussions and encounters.

To this extent, Steve Bull participates in the contemporary debate about virtual experiments with augmented reality, a technology which enriches our perceptions by electronically addressing information which is not available otherwise to our five senses. He does this by taking an ancient expression of individuality, the bust, and putting it in a traditional location, a garden. By allowing the busts to talk and to be both visible and invisible, he invites the visitors to consider the social impact of virtual reality and the its creative potentialities, both popular and emotional.

The scope of inVisible Presence is to create a network of conversational interferences which can transmit us beyond our culture, the living and lived, the speaking and spoken. It creates a lively experimental laboratory in a micro-political environment of confrontation, discussion and cultural cooperation.

by Elena Zanichelli
Bogliasco Fellow 2012

Translation IT=>EN: Alessandra Natale and Terese Svoboda
AR browser: Junaio

inVisible Presence

I am installing thirty-eight virtual AR busts in the garden of the Villa dei Pini by a commission celebrating the 15th year of the Bogliasco Foundation. The current fellows that you see as busts in this photo (L to R) are Arni Ingolfsson, Ersi Sotiropoulos and Judith Wechsler. My next several posts are dedicated to my installation process.