Infinite Detail (AR art and ads)

[One chapter in the novel is written like a journalistic feature article on the The Croft in Bristol, and one section is about the vibrant street art] (..) This is nothing new, Stokes Croft has looked like this for decades—but put on a pair of spex running Flex and the art comes alive in ways that seem to warp reality. Buildings strobe with colour while tentacles of paint slither out of the architecture to splatter unsuspecting passersby, herds of rainbow-coloured zebras run alongside passing traffic, and vast, ancient-looking trees explode through rooftops to dominate the skies. They’re the kind of augmented graffiti hacks you might have seen in cities all across the globe, but on an unprecedented scale. “What we do is basically impose zero limits on what artists can create and post,” explains the Dutch artist Anika Bernhardt, the Croft’s “uncurator.” “As long as they stick by a handful of community-agreed guidelines, artists can put art—both digital and paint—basically wherever they like. They’re free to post over or alter other people’s work, even; in fact, we actively encourage it. It’s very much a free-for-all. My job here is less being curator and more a logger or archivist—instead of deciding what art is shown here, I just make a record of it.” I’m intrigued by the way she talks about encouraging artists to post over others’ work. Isn’t that hugely frustrating to the original artist? Isn’t it just a form of vandalism? “We don’t like to use that word here,” Bernhardt tells me. “We want to break that association that art is something that needs gatekeepers, that has to be restricted to galleries. Plus, we have ways of recording all the art, so that it’s instantly retrievable.” She demonstrates this to me, using a part of the Flex app that allows us to delve back in time. It’s a dizzying effect—almost as surreal as the street art itself—as she appears to rewind time, the faces of the buildings changing rapidly around me as murals and AR projections shift and change in reverse. (Kindle loc. 953-970)

and they’re here, swarming around gridlocked traffic and into Times Square. It’s the first time Rush has seen it; Scott had refused to bring him before, saying it’s not somewhere real New Yorkers go. It’s just as awful and wonderful as he’d imagined. Hundred-foot-high superheroes fill the air, punching their cartoon nemeses into skyscrapers that explode into glass-shard blizzards, only to be replaced by hundred-foot-tall anthropomorphic M&Ms, arguing and laughing and falling over, only to be replaced by hundred-foot-tall teen pop stars, peering down at him and smiling over the rims of the latest Samsung spex, only to be replaced by koi carp the size of humpback whales, lazily orbiting a Sony logo built from iridescent bubbles, only to be replaced by hundred-foot-tall NBA legends, slam-dunking— Rush yanks his spex away from his face and the augmented-reality adverts disappear, the towering hyperreal simulations vanishing from the warm night air, but the screens are still there, still everywhere. Some are the size of apartment blocks, some mere tennis courts, but they’re fucking everywhere, everywhere that isn’t a shop front or a Starbucks, on every wall and building. They cycle through brand after brand, from Google to Coke, Delta to Facebook, Hershey to Tesla. Brands merge into faces: politicians, the celebrity president, bleached-hair Aryan news anchors, all peering at him over scrolling text. Share prices, breaking news, war atrocities, football scores, celebrity gossip, fake news and real lies. It’s like somebody took the Internet, the hyperactive never-ending churn of the timelines, the constant scroll through Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, and made it real, physical, and nailed it to the walls of the fucking city. (Kindle loc. 1658-1668)