Radioscape in the context of augmented reality Edwin van der Heide When I initially got the idea for Radioscape, I was thinking about creating a parallel reality that traverses the existing physical space and reveals itself by navigating through that physical space. It was later, when I encountered the term augmented reality, that I started reflecting about artworks in which the augmentation of reality plays a central role. During this process I beRadioscape can be seen as an artwork in which reality gets augmented. It’s important to mention that I consider all modalities (not only the visual) when thinking about augmentation and I believe that it’s a requirement for an augmented experience that the perceived result is more than the combination of the real and the virtual. The real and the virtual should not just co-exist but relate to, and influence each other, leading to an experience that is more complex than the addition of the two. I like to see it as a perceived ‘multiplication’ of the world around us with a virtual constructed reality.
Image courtesy STUDIO Edwin van der Heide
came more and more convinced of the idea that
In this text I’ll first give a more technical explanation of Radioscape. I believe it’s important to understand the parallels between the acoustic
traverses and reflects in the three dimensional
space and the electromagnetic space that form
space around us, it is also spatial because our
the foundations of the work. After that I’ll go into
listening results in the perception of sound as a
more detail on the nature of the augmentation
spatial phenomenon. Furthermore, any spatial
that occurs in the work.
experience, such as the perception of sound, has
It was a call for artworks for an area in the
a bodily component to it because we relate the
country side of Japan that brought me to the fol-
perception of (things in) space to the perception
lowing question: We perceive sounds as individual
of our body in space. We can act in, and move
sources that merge and interact with the acoustic
ourselves through the acoustic space.
space around us; would it be possible to achieve
Radio is often used to transmit individual sig-
a similar experience with electromagnetic (ra-
nals from one point to one or more other points.
dio) waves? Sound is not only spatial because it
The spatial nature of the electromagnetic waves
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