Unplugged: An Augmented Reality Party of Poetry, Prose, and Music is a theoretical practice in the effects of augmented reality (AR) on traditional paper publishing. Constructed using an AR technology created by Metaio, party photography from Vancouver, and original prose poetry Unplugged is a hypermediated book that traverses the physical and digital planes. Readers interact with the text via a mobile app, also called Unplugged, which projects pseudo-holograms of movies, images, and animations onto the printed page. In addition, the app provides environmental soundscapes that inform the reading experience. This AR inspired story creates an immersive media activity unlike anything most readers are used to encountering. The effects of this technology on the reader and the reading process point to the influence AR will have on traditional publishing

Fisher, Joshua A

English

Via Sapientiae: The Institutional Repository at DePaul University

DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 7-2015 Unplugged: an augmented reality party of poetry, prose, and music Joshua A. Fisher DePaul University, JFISHE33@depaul.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Fisher, Joshua A., "Unplugged: an augmented reality party of poetry, prose, and music" (2015). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 186. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/186 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact digitalservices@depaul.edu. UnpluggedAn Augmented Reality Party of Prose, Poetry and MusicWritten and Developed by Joshua A. FisherPhotographs by Joshua Peter GrafsteinThis Book Contains an Augmented RealityUnpluggedPoetry and Digital Media by Joshua A. FisherPhotography by Joshua Peter for JustJash.comI don’t want to be the only one heretelling all the secrets—HafizDirections for use:This book is not meant to be read by itself.  To enjoy the augmented reality experience please download the free app from the below link or by scanning the QR code below.Download the Mobile App: http://www.bookunplugged.com/download-unplugged/Once you’ve downloaded and installed the application on to your mobile device you’re ready to begin. Simply point your device’s camera at each page to engage and explore the party. You must be connected to a WI-FI network to download the app.Saturday night blooms. From the coast of  my bed I call to all of  the great adventurers to hold my exhaustion at bay, to nourish me with their indomitable spirit of  discovery so that I may launch myself  out of  the front door into the new night. I ask the pantheon of  poets to bless me; ask the muses to let me kiss adventure. Immediately, a crescendo of  noise on the street answers and I am up and scrambling for shirt and jeans, my wallet and keys. I am ready to embark.Up the street the Electric Owl pulses with music, groups of  people mill about in front of  the club.  As I approach, the bass’s vibrations tickle the heart and spark giddiness. I laugh a little bit to myself  and think of  the office with its blank walls and its motif  of  quietude; a daily paean to emptiness. On the street, the beating music fills me with a longing that pulls me into the line waiting to enter the club. After two weeks of  of  solitary in the studio the world grew heavy, the air thick against my exhausted body. Mornings, I would ride the train to work, work for twelve hours at my computer, and then return from work to bed before doing it all over. The universe shrank, constrained to the ribbon of  life I had cut for myself. Friday evening after work I barreled home to my apartment. Before I got to the door my phone vibrated—a text from my boss. Nausea climbed my back. When the door shut, I felt inside of  me the weight of  the spinning world. Dropping into burnout ‘s blackness, I slept but did not dream.  Saturday morning’s warm light cut through the cheap blinds at my window so different from the magnetic light of  my monitor. For two weeks, meals had been lost to lines of  code, and the sun had become a halogen light, the wind a ceiling fan.  All I had known was the buzz of  the hard drive, the percussion of  the keyboard under my fingers. Been working too long—I’d forgotten how a leaf  feels.  I closed my eyes and sleep away the day. No buzz in the body commanded me out of  bed. Hours passed.  The day passed. When I open my eyes it was dark. Outside, muffled voices in the street rise up to my window.  Working in my small studio I hadn’t talked to a stranger, let alone a friend.  No soothing balm of  a human voice. The voices outside now seem to sing to me. Get up.  Leave your bed.  Beyond the walls of  my bedroom a universe reborn to me is unfurling.  The harness on my shoulders slides off; the blinders long hours had placed upon my head fall away. The colors in my bedroom deepen, the blue of  the night as vibrant as the ocean.* A woman’s brown eyes regard those waiting. She holds her gaze on me for more than a long second. Don’t know what to say—lips so long sealed together in grim determination. Her sturdy forearms press into her hips making an imposing barrier. Her head turns as she scans the crowd for anything undesirable, and when she sees a couple in line arguing, a smirk unsettles her lips. Men in sport coats and graphic shirts huddle next to one another and clap each other on the back. There’s camaraderie of  hope in this line. Behind me, women whisper to one another about meeting up with coworkers. In front, that same couple promises one another that they will have fun tonight—they will, they promise. The line shuffles, step by step, like taxiing airplanes. All fly the same sky with no assurance that they’ll make their planned destination.The bouncer’s back is a bulwark. How many people does he turn away? How many will he let descend into the night? The line shudders. There’s a ripple of  discontent as a flock of  young men and women try to jump the queue. In a breath, the bouncer descends like judgment upon the interlopers. The people in line capture the retreat on their phones. They share their photos of  the undesirables with the bouncer who unhooks the rope and bids his paparazzi enter. The dancers sway like so many crowded flowers in a garden. At the edge of  the dance floor, a woman leaning against the bar wears the music like a summer dress, turning with it. Her hypnotic movements draw the gaze of  men who dream—l’amour, toujours l’amour.  I admire her too, jealous with fear, but too shy to meet her gaze, and turn back to the dancers before she can feel the weight of  my stare.Descending the stairs, men and women with searching eyes look up, their salutations short comets whipping across my field of  vision and then burning out.  They wonder after friends running late and their expectation rises like bread. I search for a fellow adventurer, some other sleeper awoken after too long a solitary workweek, someone who has been apart and is ready to return. Women shriek from across the room—calls of  companionship and love. Their friends call back. The only greetings I have known of  late have been email notifications: Little pings that affirmed my existence. The women’s prayer for friendship, answered so readily by the object of  their affection, is almost foreign and exciting.  To be called for love, instead of  labor, is a pleasantry I did not know I lost. A man holds his arms around two women; his companions churn against him.  His face doesn’t light up with satisfaction. And I for weeks having only known for the arms of  my chair embrace that same familiar persistent absence. At the bar, a man stumbles down the stairs with a rose in his hand.  He glances from right to left for his partner, a girlfriend maybe.  He gazes in my direction. I turn around.  Behind me, a lover and a woman cuddle in a booth.  She giggles and drinks his wine; he whispers in her ear. I smile at this, but then look back to see the man, the rose now hanging limply in his hand. I see him shudder and quake. He slips his free hand into his pocket and retrieves his phone. Forlorn, he types in a text message and stares through me to the blonde. Oblivious, she retrieves her phone and squints at the screen before pursing her lips, putting it away, and kissing her lover.Couples and groups of  dancers gyrate in concentric circles. Everyone just waves into and out of  the music like the tide. The DJ’s record, a moon setting the ebb and flow of  the human pool. A tight circle forms around a man gyrating like a matador.  He is in the arena with his invisible bull, guiding it with dance. When the bass beat drops, I wonder if  my body is capable of  such movement. The matador pauses and motions to another dancer who enters the circle with the bull. No one fears they might be gored, everyone steps into the ring and moves with the matador’s cape. Among the dancers, I take a long view of  the party. A girl holds up a placard that says, “Vote for Vodka.” Many glasses are raised into the air in congratulations. A gaggle of  women in different tints of  the same sequined dress wrap their arms around one another for a selfie. My eyes turn to a party huddled in a booth staring out into the crowd.  Their hands languish on their numb phones. Each must be thinking he is stuck with the wrong company, stuck in a waste of  time.  A bus boy flits between the tables like a hummingbird. At each table, his arms dip into the conversations and draw out a glass, a plate, anything he can get ahold of. A tall, lanky man leaps up causing the busboy to stop in his tracks with a jolt.  Brimming over, the man swallows the rest of  his spirit in one gulp and drops his empty glass into the busboy’s bin with a clang. The bus boy’s lips curl up for a moment and then resolves into a gritty smile, a determination in his eyes. I recognize that look: only a few more hours left of  work, a few more glasses before the pillow, before sleep with the rising sun.  The busboy marches past, leaving the drunk to the pitter-patter for his pitiful laughter. Harboring back at the bar, I grab two abandoned glasses before the busboy can get to them. One is half  full of  ice and the other has only a little liquor.  I pour the booze into the glass and as the spirit moves between the ice. I ponder wasting away in the monitor’s glow. Work never brought a smile to my face, never flamed my passion for the world, but only swallowed joy up into itself. Two men watch me pour the liquor from one glass to the other. When I close my eyes, they talk about me. I remember when the phone stopped ringing at work. When it had been a week since anyone had said my name, when it had been two. One of  the men asks if  I am okay. I am mute, but he waits. He looks at me, and I stare at him, searching for a word—there’s nothing. I nod and look away. keeps me in thrall. In my glass, an ice cube melts, cracks, and the liquid pooled on top slips through. There’s a rumble of  nausea in my stomach as I begin to understand that for weeks I have been orbiting a devouring sun.  I realize if  the phantom of  my phone can claw at me then I am truly its slave. A dull buzz rings up my thigh and shocks me.  My phone is vibrating. I dash my hand down into my pocket to see who is calling. Underneath my fingers I feel nothing but denim. There’s no bulge against my thigh, no weight hanging in the pocket, only my wallet and keys. The vibration ends, and there is no phone, just the half-life of  its presence that My weariness solidifies into righteous resentment. I stand up straighter. I do not need to live tethered to a screen, a mongrel always at its beck and call. Empowered by disgust I look around the bar and chart a constellation of  patrons’ pallid faces illuminated by the pale glow of  their phones. Every one of  them looking into their own hands as if  to divine their fate rather then lifting their eyes to adventure. The DJ announces last call and the club begins to empty. I feel some profound feeling blanket my shoulders as a beatitude, the awakening of  a forgotten nature. The lights in the club shine even brighter before they are turned off  and I appreciate the warm radiance they cast upon the dancer’s faces. In my ribcage I feel my heart pound with a desire to speak with all of  the dancers, to wake them and lift their eyes to the splendor. I am hungry to share the realization of  this moment. I am itching to live. I make my way to the stairs. On the staircase the cool spring night air rushes down as I ascend. The reality of  the world waits for me if  I am ready for it. Unplugged, I walk down the street weaving in and out of  the light of  the streetlamps and pass a wild garden with a cherry tree reaching over a low brick wall.  I notice a cool wind press against the leaves and cause the fresh blossoms to shake slightly. Hesitating, I reach up and cup one of  the pinkish white flowers in my hand. I snap off  the end of  a branch. Sap drips, sticky as honey, and the petals, almost weightless. 

Unplugged: an augmented reality party of poetry, prose, and music

https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1190&amp;context=etd

Unplugged: an augmented reality party of poetry, prose, and music

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