Interactive installation and curating
Designed and directed by Thierry Fournier, Augmented Window is a “sensory observatory”. Different artists and authors have been invited to produce a critical reading or original work on the landscape itself. Each contribution is geo-localized and presented on a touch-screen window looking out onto a landscape that is simultaneously displayed as a live video feed on the window itself.
The observed landscape is the starting point for all these contributions, from the critical approaches and questions it raises to the very modes of observation it evokes: immersion vs. distancing, surveillance, geo-localization, etc. Invited authors produce these contributions either while exploring the landscape (in situ with a smartphone), or remotely (via an online content management system). They are superposed to the live video feed of the landscape seen from the window.
Augmented window is exhibited for the first time at the Pompidou Center (Futur en Seine festival) from the 17th to the 26th of June, 2011, during which the following 16 artists and authors will address the Halles district of Paris: Benjamin Laurent Aman, Ivan Argote, Felicia Atkinson, Christelle Bakhache et Clément Féger, David Beytelmann, Marie-Julie Bourgeois, Pierre Carniaux, Céline Flécheux, Juliette Fontaine, Thierry Fournier, Marie Husson, Tomek Jarolim, Jean-François Robardet, Marcos Serrano, Antoine Schmitt.
The screen acts like a window, framing the landscape as a real-time video. By zooming in and scanning the window intuitively through touch, visitors explore the different contributions, comparing and contrasting them. The choice of a fixed and vertical frame favors rich and comprehensive interactions via a sensory experience.
Augmented Window thus produces a curatorial, collective and prospective representation of a landscape, where typically separated approaches (art, geography, architecture, documentary, fiction…) overlap in a common critical perspective, implemented through the principles of “augmented reality”. In this sense, augmented reality is not addressed here in terms of immersion or additional layers of information, but rather questioned as a possible means for creating a field of tension between different points of view.
The Augmented window prototype was the subject of a research project coordinated by Thierry Fournier at the research laboratory of the Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (Drii program, Sensory surfaces framework). It has been developed in partnership with the Sciences Po médialab, under the auspices of Prof. Bruno Latour.
