I come very late to mobile apps, and have managed to survive until now without a smart phone. These things go against my grain.
And yet, as I've prepared for this class, it's become interesting to me in unanticipated ways: Essex, the marshes; history and landscape. This is Charles Olson territory. And John Stilgoe. A long way round for me, to Olson.
I question the AR view of something called "reality" over here, and information/communication about it, over there — that somehow an app is going to fix. This is to dismiss the "thing," and its capacity to speak to those who will patiently watch and listen.
At the same time, the relationship of thing/place, to language (for the augmentation is typically language-based), opens up the possibility of a mobile form of emblematics: title/epigram, (allegorical) image, and further text. As such, it is something like my own tumblr practice at asfaltics. I imagine I will be exploring these issues, as a (teaching) participant in this course.
