Aristotle: The Godfather of Augmented Reality.

What is Augmented reality? For that matter what is reality?
Everyday we augment our reality. Our brains change the way we perceive things around us. Everyone's perceptions differ slightly, no one sees or hears things in exactly the same way. Our brains are particularly good at filling in or leaving out bits of information that make up our perception of reality.

Visual and aural stimulus can change our perception of reality. Our physiological state can be altered by sight and sound. Our reality becomes augmented. And all this without any technology!

Aristotle in his work on tragedy— The Poetics —understood the place of the senses in augmenting people's reality. He set down clear guidelines as to the best way to affect people's state of mind. He saw that this idea of the artist (or Poet) being able to "conjure" dead heroes from the past, to unleash the demons from the underworld and to kill and re-kill loved characters was almost part of a divine calling. The power the Poet could hold over his audience was great, and therefore, the poet had a grave responsibility to perform the best he could. Aristotle's Poetics gives a framework for the Poets to adhere to in order that the performance touch as many of the senses as possible and therefore elicit the most powerful response from the audience. This notion of impacting people by predetermined methods flows through all creative production work. 

Emotional Shapes from Rad Sechrist. The Art Center Blog

Disney of course has been using prescribed forms and colours to deliver stories which make us feel a certain way. Character design often uses set shapes to give us emotional clues about a person we see on screen. Round shapes for soft, fun, friendly characters and Angular shapes for evil and menacing characters.

A Bridge Between Minds

Nowhere is the connection between artist and audience more prevalent than in the comic industry. Telling a story in small compressed panels is a tough ask. conveying the right information at the right moment to get the audience to suspend disbelief and to engage with the work takes some effort.

Scott McCloud’s, Understanding Comics goes along way to revealing the artistry and philosophical underpinnings of what are and how they came about. He delves into the history of the medium and breaks down the structure of comics to their essence.

The Journey McCloud takes us on is one of deconstruction and all presented through the very medium he seeks to explain. A comic book.

As a long time comic lover I have a bias to this medium. However I think that they is some terrific points in McClouds’ text that not only relates to comics but to the whole realm of visual creation and to the special relationship between creator and audience.

The Space Between Us

The Space between comic panels is where relationship exists. This space, or Gutter in comic terms, is a hidden device that allows the viewer to make connections through the narrative. McCloud focuses on the psychological concept of mental closure. Closure is the brains’ way of filling in the rest of the details we can't see based on previous information and knowledge. we observe the parts but perceive the whole. We are "Mentally completing based on past experience" pg.63. This idea of closure is what enables our minds to connections between shapes. I find this process analogous with the generative process known as “Clouding”.

Clouding is where the we take abstract elements, overlay them together, in order to create interesting positive and negative shapes. We then try and see what forms emerge from the abstraction. Aaron sims Creature Design in Photoshop is a great example of this. This act of deliberate shape seeking, much akin to children looking at clouds for dragons or ships, etc is all about closure.

“Clouding” Aaron Sims: Creature Design in Adobe Photoshop

Closure not only connects between shapes but also between narrative. In the case of comics the creator can lead an audience through particular narrative points and set up story points which the viewer then closes the story loop or themselves.

This makes the audience a "willing and conscious collaborator" pg.65 joining with the artist in a conceptual space to become "partners in the invisible" creating something out of nothing, time and time again." pg.205

I believe that this synthesis between audience and artist happens in all designed or created works and It it is the chosen medium the artist uses that becomes the dialect for this communication. As McCloud says, The “medium serves as a bridge between our minds” pg.195


-matt