Can AR Technologies Have an Impact on the Definition of Art?

Yutaka Higashiguchi

doi:10.25038/am.v0i20.331

Authors

Yutaka Higashiguchi

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.331

Keywords:

AR technologies, definition of art, fiction, multi-layered image, reality, sensory perception

Abstract

AR seems to be one of the most advanced and near-future technologies that produce new experiences and values that have never been before. However, both AR and art have a common means of engaging the senses. Thus, the problem of where the borderline between AR and art exists should come into question. In order to consider how AR will have an influence on the definition and the significance of art, this study analyses real and fictional elements in AR and art. AR requires the physical field where sensory information mediated by computer is projected. Consequently, viewers perceive the mixed image of real things and those not existing before eyes, that is fiction. Art also needs a real environment where the fictional world is opened. Though art and AR have something in common, there are crucial differences between them. AR technologies include the firm aim of erasing fictional elements that remain as ever in spite of their accurate representation. On the other hand, art attempts to preserve a fictional area within the real world. From the comparison of AR and art, it will come to light that whether there is the frame or not plays an important role in deciding what is art or what is reality. While AR reduces fictionality from a multi-layered scene to enrich a real experience, art cuts fiction from a present scene to idealize the real world. In this way, they constitute a dialectical circle and mediate new reality through fictional images from the reverse direction.

Article received: April 5, 2019; Article accepted: July 6, 2019; Published online: October 15, 2019; Review article

Author Biography

Yutaka Higashiguchi

Yutaka Higashiguchi
Kyushu University, Fukuoka
Japan

Yutaka Higashiguchi is an associate professor of Aesthetics and Art Studies at Kyushu University, Japan. He is a member of the committee of the Japanese Society for Aesthetics and has been its delegate to the Japanese Association for Art Studies since 2017. He specializes in German modern aesthetics and philosophy of natural beauty, but in recent years he also has a strong interest in urban landscapes, theories of photography, Japanese subculture, and the relation between technology and sensibility. His main papers are as follows; “The Aesthetics of Periphery without Center: A New Foundation of the Aesthetics of Nature”, International Yearbook of Aesthetics, (Vol. 5, 2002); “On the unfortunate but productive Relationship between Cinema and German Idealism” (in Japanese, 2009); “The Theory of relativity of urban landscapes: Transformation of their images with diversified means of transportation” (in Japanese, 2012).

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.331 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.331