Embodiment, meaning, and the augmented reality image
This paper investigates the augmented reality (AR) image as an embodied and interactive experience of image "in" location. The analysis of the AR image is specific in this paper to the rediscOvery iPhone app developed by the author. Operating to support a technologically mediated locative based experience of the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, rediscOvery leverages the potential of the birthplace of the Titanic as the locus of an intervention to make known the symbolic value ascribed to a particular geographical space.To analyze the interconnectedness of meaning in the AR image constructed and the embodied interaction of the user, this paper first traces the historical trajectory of technology mediated projects in visual arts practice where visual perception and meaning have been turned into a condition of embodied interaction of the viewer, both spatially and temporally. This includes Krueger's Videoplace (1969) Rokeby's Very Nervous System (1986) Sancho Plan (2010) Murder on Beacon Hill (2010) and Cardiff's The Telephone Call (2001).Using Bergsonian notions of intuition (Kennedy 2000; Hansen 2004) as a basis for analysis of how these visual arts projects demonstrate the capacity of the body to receive, process and make meaningful visual arts practice, this paper subsequently resolves a language of embodiment by which to assess the rediscOvery AR images, in terms of how the images create a distinct model of the world, and one that requires an embodied presence in it.