Experiments in Augmented Reality

Irene Alvarado

Is augmented reality technology about to enter the mainstream? AR platforms have finally become widely accessible to artists, designers, and technologists thanks to recent advances in mobile performance and a new collection of powerful computer vision techniques. As such, the medium offers rich possibilities for experimentation and a chance to rethink how we experience the intersection of the physical and digital.

In this course, students will acquire an understanding of basic concepts and techniques necessary to design, prototype, and build simple AR experiences – with a consideration of not just visual but also aural AR. We’ll focus on the design/UX of AR experiences as well as the technical foundations necessary to actually code these experiences. We’ll supplement design/coding exercises with an overview of the history of AR and discuss a broad range of use cases. Our tool of choice will be WebXR, but we will go over prototyping techniques outside of these platforms to speed up the design process.