TEDxDubai talk: Augmented Reality & The Power of Imagination

November 27, 2011 in Augmented Reality, event, Georges Melies, presentation, TEDx, tilt shift, video

I’m very pleased to share video of my recent TEDxDubai talk! Naturally, I discussed Augmented Reality but I also tied in my Tilt Shift photography to this year’s TEDx theme of “The Beauty of Small Things”.

Fighting a fever and a flu bug, I mustered all my might and was so happy to make it on that stage! Let’s say, it really was an out of body experience!

My talk featured my children’s AR pop-up book “Who’s Afraid of Bugs”. The book was created using AR software by Junaio. (You can also read more here in a recent interview I did.)

I spoke to the importance and power of imagination and make-believe, and how they pertain to AR at this critical junction in the medium’s evolution. When we make-believe and when we imagine, we are in two places simultaneously; make-believe is about projecting or layering our imagination on top of a current situation or circumstance. In many ways, this is what AR is too: layering imagined worlds on top of our existing reality.

As a designer/artist/PhD researcher I am both a practitioner and a researcher, a maker and a believer. As a practitioner, I do, create, design; as a researcher I dream, aspire, hope. I am a make-believer working with a technology that is about make-believe, about imagining possibilities atop actualities. Now, more than ever, we need more creative adventurers and make-believers to help AR continue to evolve and become a wondrous new medium, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

Make-believe is an extension of wonderment for me. In my previous TEDx talk, in 2010 at YorkU (embedded below) on wonderment and the creative process, I spoke to wonder guiding my work in AR, and the importance of developing wonderment in technology alongside compelling content/storytelling as the medium advances.

I am grateful to the superhuman TEDxDubai curators Giorgio Ungania and Natascia Radice, all of the wonderful volunteers, the mega talented fellow speakers and each of the incredibly engaging delegates for a truly stellar event. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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