“间性”的张力——扩增实境艺术的审美之维

The Tension of “Intermediacy”:On Studies of the Aesthetic Dimensions of Augmented Reality Art

扩增实境(Augmented Reality)技术作为一种艺术媒介近年来在当代艺术领域渐渐成熟起来,并开始在威尼斯、伊斯坦布尔等世界各大双年展上吸引越来越多普通观众与研究者的目光。从审美的角度来说,扩增实境艺术具有许多新的特征:就审美本体而言,它试图超越虚拟与现实的二元限界,处于真实与虚拟"之间";就审美创造而言,它在空间与时间的多重可能中穿梭,处于原初情境与再造情境"之间";就审美欣赏而言,它在交互体验中进行着沉浸与反沉浸的双向运动,处于沉浸与反沉浸"之间"。正是扩增实境艺术所具有的这种"间性"的张力,使其在延伸我们传统审美阈限的同时也表征了当今数字时代的文化范式。

The terminology ＂Augmented reality＂ is a description of a form of technology with which the virtual images produced by computers overlap themselves with the reality level, so that a new circumstance is generated which combines the virtual and the real. From the year 2010, augmented reality as an artistic media has gradually matured in contemporary art field. At Venice and Istanbul Biennials, many audiences and critics began to pay close attention to it. In terms of aesthetics, augmented reality art has many new features： In the perspective of ontology, it tries to break the barrier between virtuality and reality and exists in a state between the virtual and the real; in the perspective of creation, it traverses the possibilities of space and time and exists in a state between the original context and the recreated context ; and in the perspective of appreciation, it acts in a two - way movement of immersion and anti - immersion in the interactive experience and exists in a state between immersion and anti -immersion, becoming an open and evolving existence. The state of the tension of ＂intermediacy＂ on the one hand extends our traditional aesthetic manner, and on the other hand, it also represents contemporary digital cultural paradigm. With the help of head -mounted display or handheld devices, the information created by augmented reality art is overlapped by the reality. In this way, the original space will present new possibilities and the thing that doesn＇t exist before will incarnate as the real existence so that the virtual is a part of the real. Before augmented reality art, the relationship between the virtual and the real is binary, they are parallel to each other from the perspective of vision but they never intersect. Even through we can logically tell the difference between physical space and the space produced by computers, their relationship is no longer seen as binary. Because augmented reality art begins to deconstruct the border, and thus we live in a world in which different realties can be transcended through. If we want to appreciate augmented reality art, the premise is to deconstmct the opposition between the real and the virtual. Even through we should treat augmented reality as integrity ontol0gically, when we want to create augmented reality art, it is obvious that the ability to incorporate the two different spaces is more important. When trying to do this, the question that artists might confront is how to cope and assemble the two spaces so that they should have an experiment of ＂re - contextualization＂. ＂Re - contextualization＂ is also a course of ＂re - shape the meaning＂. What artists should do is to make the two spaces conflict and reconciliate together in order to create new meanings. Every circumstance is a combination of time and space so that＂re-contextualization＂ is also re- lated to the time. The one dimension of the virtual space could be perceived as a chronotope, and it can also be perceived as a visual symbol emerging from the real space. When the perception enabled by the space is substituted by the emerging visual symbol, the temporal question can be canceled . If we treat the space as a container and thus time is the content ,which is from a dualism perspective ,the question of temporal juxtaposition in a space will emerge. If so, the temporal question will replace the spatial question. Augmented reality art has different forms, such as the one s based on head -mounted display and the one which is based on the handheld devices. For the former, just as the virtual reality art, augmented reality creates a world that is a simulated environment in which spectators using head -mounted display immerse them- selves in the self-sufficient world and become part of it. In this sense, augmented reality is the extension of virtual reality, For the latter, the virtual vision is replaced by naked eyes. However, because of the emergence of media, the realization of deep interaction that is immersion,is hard to realize, since the attention of spectators is easy to be distracted by the medium and is easy for the spectators to use the logic of sense to replace the logic of sensation. Just as the contemporary media theorists point out that media is not a neutral existence, on the contrary, it constructs an environment. When we receive the message from the media, our perception is also reshaped by it. This not only happens in art. With the development of computer and digital technology, our life has been incorporated with the virtual world and we are facing a new cultural paradigm, the multiple realities. Augmented reality art is the interpretation of the new digital cultural paradigm and that＇s the reason why we need to discuss this new art＇s aesthetic dimensions.