25. Februar 2021
The use of mobile augmented reality (AR) in art celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2020: with the market launch of AR-compatible smartphones in 2009, artists who discovered this technology as a new medium have been appearing since 2010. Among them were Tamiko Thiel and Mark Skwarek, who were to be among the founding members of the first AR artists’ group Manifest.AR in 2011. The first mobile AR art was politically engaged: with actions such as logo hacking in public space and an AR guerilla intervention at MoMA New York, it drew attention to violations such as environmental catastrophes and to the established art canon (see Skwarek 2018). The expectation formulated by Jung Yeon Ma and Jong Soo Choi in 2007, that AR would prove valuable for artistic applications, came true in artistic practice shortly afterwards (see Jung/Jong 2007). Meanwhile, AR no longer needs guerrilla actions to get into art and cultural institutions: most institutions that want to keep pace with digital innovations have AR in their repertoire, whether in the form of AR art, of mixed reality installations and performances, or for education purposes or as guidance systems.[1]