Ethos

 

            Human perception is a construction architected by genetic and environmental factors to accept only that information which is vital for survival within the political and economic systems of scarcity within which it exists. While our genetic motivators cannot yet be artfully manipulated, environments have been deliberately constructed to influence human cognition for as long as education, culture and government have existed. Through our exposure to these deliberate environments we are conditioned to filter data from our raw perceptions in such a way as to make real time cost/benefit analysis that mesh with those values of utility held by whichever population of perceivers we develop within. We are educated and conditioned to act appropriately.

            Luckily, the societal conditioning of human perception has never been a one sided process. Efforts to standardize opinions and decision-making are almost always confronted with efforts in the opposite direction. These self-aware manipulations of visual stimuli are often called “art”: Film, literature, photography, sculpture and architecture are separated from that which is not “artful” by the intended cognitive influence of the artist upon the viewer. These affects are many, and works of art tend to pull in a wonderfully diverse number of cognitive directions in comparison to one another. Art exists to counteract the standardization of human thought.

            As our subjective reality can be defined as the sum of sensory experiences we can remember processing, designers, artists, filmmakers and propagandists can subtly affect an audiences’ world by stimulating small changes in their respective perceptual constructs.

            This divide has always been somewhat equal, as both art and education have held a designated position in contrast with the physical reality they are built to comment upon. We have always had a neutral, common reality upon which our society of perceivers might stabilize their relative subjectivities in relation to change. When the movie ends we all return to “the real world.”

            Today we find ourselves in the early years of a field of technology known as “Reality Augmentation.” This technology, once readily available, will become a new art form that does not comment upon reality, but effectively supplants it. By allowing designers to place internet-based content over their audiences’ visual perceptions of any designated physical object, “AR” allows artists to make dynamically informed manipulations of subjective perception. How audiences see their world, what information they take from it, how their judgments are remembered in relation to their society, and, potentially, how they might decide to act in response to said stimuli will all be left up to those who design AR applications. One could live in a movie more compelling than the “real world” and never have to take it off. Who will design these experiences and what creative license do they have? How do they decide which goals are worth encouraging?

            Augmented Reality technology will allow users to alter their perceptions of the physical world with networked data. What facebook has done to destabilize self-concepts may slowly happen to the once-uniform human visual perception of the physical world. So what do we do?

 

 

             A game is a set of arbitrary goals deliberately selected to evoke pleasure from those who engage with it. Maybe, just maybe, by designing games with a desire to help nurture the human 氣 through this tumultuous period of change...

 

We can improve the game, I mean, world... and have fun doing it.

By fostering a culture of play. 

 

 

 

司柏仁

February 2009