Introduction
Although storytelling has evolved, various aspects have not changed. Good stories should create personal connections and inspire action among audiences. The fundamental elements of stories have changed with recent technologies focusing on Augmented Reality (AR). Digital storytelling uses the immersive experience facilitated by AR, captivating audiences with magical encounters for people worldwide. AR technology has become essential in today’s world as it is applied in entertainment, medicine, and marketing. There exists a significant disconnect between the data and the physical world. Therefore, AR superimposes digital images and data in the physical world to provide an interactive experience of the real world (Gwilt 228). It is essential to explore the significance of AR in digital storytelling, its role in activism, and issues in access.
Significance Of AR As a Form of Digital Storytelling
AR provides many advantages for people using it as a mode of presenting digital stories. Firstly, the concept of AR enables individuals to experience the augmented view of urban environments when told in digital stories. Smartphone and computer users have continued to rise steadily globally. Therefore, a person can experience augmented views of real-world surroundings or places by running AR software on smart devices such as hand-held computers and smartphones. AR allows various creators to use virtual content like designs, messages, audio, and images to show digital enhancements of different scenes in stories. In addition, AR allows users or the audience to switch between a shared and personal experience of various artworks and stories. AR-generated digital stories enable people to face or encounter both analog and digital versions of a similar environment (Gwilt 229). For instance, AR intersects with various art forms to provide individuals with complex technologically and socially encoded interfaces that combine first-hand experiences of digital media, creative practice, and public space in the hybrid composition.
Secondly, AR helps tell digital stories by improving creativity, literacy, and recollection of various scenes. Internet growth has resulted in increased levels of information that people need to consume. People get a creative mix when AR is used to tell digital stories. Creativity and critical thinking are increased by the combination of augmented images and narration of different information. As a result, people are encouraged to come out of their shells because of new experiences created by AR. Furthermore, technologically created digital stories are temporary, virtual, and do not damage aspects of the environment. For example, the printing of books requires material obtained from the destruction of the environment. AR-facilitated electronic stories can be realized at specific locations and generated remotely (Gwilt 231). For instance, a famous artist continued creating work after physical incapacitation using a custom-made eye-tracking software program.
Thirdly, AR-powered experiences combine experimental moments with conscious awareness, causing perceptual shifts. AR situations and encounters are created to exploit locative space and generate experiential discovery. Heightened awareness produced by AR causes perceptual shifts, and users encounter a sensation that becomes something extra-marginal. Heightened awareness indicates that AR has a feature requiring specific engagement that is unique to peripheral devices as well as the capability to situate specific artistic performances. Generally, perceptual possibilities are shaped through the situation of AR experiences. In addition, AR encounters promote psychological immersion, which measures how compelling digital stories are. Psychological immersion happens when visitors’ senses are extremely aroused through augmented virtual experience, making their intellect and emotions react as if the AR encounter is occurring in an actual world. For example, psychological immersion is similar to the phenomenon that occurs when individuals weave themselves into a film’s or drama’s plot (Dolinsky 296). AR art provides a certain sense of immersion as locative activities engage visitors in transforming neutral public spaces into aesthetic and subversive communication scenes.
Furthermore, AR facilitated electronic stories that enable people to integrate virtual objects into their physical space, promoting psychological immersion through the repositioning of the physical relationship of their bodies to the world. Such a repositioning affects a person’s emotional thinking, allowing AR to reorganize mundane existence. Recognizing transformative AR-enabled environments enables individuals to reconsider relationships and representations of the imaginative virtual world (Dolinsky 296). For instance, the image of Lenin in the park shows the use of AR by a person to convince themselves that they are in another reality.
Possibilities of AR As a Tool for Activism
Most technologies are used as tools to provide information and condemn destructive social issues. Similarly, AR has a role to play in addressing the reduction of harmful issues in society. AR is easily accessible to almost everyone with a smartphone because mobile technology is available to significant parts of the world. Mobile AR allows activists to create anything at no cost, excluding an internet connection and a computer. AR can be used as a platform to generate social conversations in a community and broadcast shared experiences that can be seen by millions of people in real-time, enabling them to relive past atrocities of a specific social problem. AR can be used in activism in several ways. Firstly, AR facilitates logo hacking, allowing activists to focus on corrupt corporations and unmask their atrocities. Such actions are created by making subversive messages of the corporation’s advertisements or logo (Skwarek 9). As a result, the corporation’s promotions and logos are used against them.
Secondly, AR can be used as a tool for activism through distributed action. Distributed action involves a collaboration of various AR activists worldwide to oppose a particular issue in society. For instance, the arOCCUPY May Day urged people to shun work and partake in a worldwide strike. More than twenty countries and forty-two artists contributed to the protests as the events engaged social networks and selected offline locations (Skwarek 18). Such projects can be organized by open calls posted on social networks and public websites on the internet.
Thirdly, increased development of applications that can create AR can increase activism efforts globally. Such apps can democratize AR through wide accessibility, enabling the public to create their messages or ideas. AR apps should harness the collective power of the public’s desire to create a better planet. As a result, fresh and unique ideas emerge, resulting in widespread activism (Skwarek 38). For example, the widespread use of AR to rebuke racism can reduce the social problem since people will experience the atrocities of racism in augmented reality.
Fourthly, the empathy machine is a thrilling possibility of AR. Empathy machines refer to technologies that enable people to comprehend and relate to others whose circumstances are worse. Such technologies allow multitudes of people to relive and experience other individuals’ social conditions in real-time. As a result, viewers can experience other people’s sufferings from any location in the world. AR technologies provide immersive encounters cost-effectively (Skwarek 28). An example of the empathy machine is the Clouds Over Sidra film, which narrated the everyday struggles of a Syrian girl in a Jordanian Camp.
Critiques About Access
AR technologies and their use are not ubiquitous as most people would assume. Furthermore, digital storytelling using AR is less widespread than traditional street art and graffiti. The exponential rise in owners of smartphones, tablet computers, and mobile technologies shows that viewing and creating AR-facilitated digital stories has the potential to expand rapidly. Such a phenomenon occurs mainly because AR enabling technologies have become more popular and increasingly available. The increased access to AR technologies has raised other issues associated with their use. The creation of AR-enabled graffiti and art triggers the problem of legality. In addition, AR assimilates the physical environment and reconstructs it. As a result, the juxtaposition of surfaces and images creates urban bricolage, making it difficult to determine the visual hierarchy of importance, legitimacy, and meaning. The context of the multifaceted ecology of the creation of images and their meaning needs to be considered (Gwilt 230). For instance, located access to additional digital content can make explaining the current physical environment more straightforward or complex.
Conclusion
AR is an emerging technology that can transform digital storytelling; therefore, it is crucial to examine its significance, possibilities for use, and critiques about access. AR is important in telling digital stories because it provides an augmented view of the urban environment. It enables people to recollect various events because it leaves a lasting impression. Furthermore, it causes both perceptual shifts and psychological immersion, which provides a magical experience for users. AR can be used for activism through empathy machines, logo hacking, and distributed action. Accessibility critiques are related to the questions of legality and visual hierarchy of surfaces and images. AR offers many possibilities and applications, and it can revolutionize digital storytelling.
Works Cited
Dolinsky, Margaret. “Shifting Perceptions–Shifting Realities.” Augmented Reality Art, edited by Vladimir Geroimenko, Springer, 2014, pp. 295-304.
Gwilt, Ian. “Augmented Reality Graffiti and Street Art.” Augmented Reality Art, edited by Vladimir Geroimenko, Springer, 2018, pp. 227-236.
Skwarek, Mark. “Augmented Reality Activism.” Augmented Reality Art, edited by Vladimir Geroimenko, Springer, 2018, pp. 3-40.