Augmentations across virtual and physical topologies: Mixed Reality re-assembled
Rewa Wright / Australia
University of New South Wales
Paper
An analysis of the material-discursive practices surrounding Augmented Virtuality and Augmented Reality reveals the some- times digressional, sometimes convergent positions taken by computer science and media art on the issue of embodiment. Mapping out some of those positions, this paper considers Mixed Reality as a topology that has an entangled and material relationship with the body, that goes beyond an analysis of Mixed Reality as a technology of augmentation: rather, a topological understanding of Mixed Reality explores the patterns of diffraction ( Barad 2007: 29) that ripple and disrupt the material thresholds between physical and virtual, troubling the over simplified real/virtual dichotomy that permeates much Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research.