Prof. Blair MacIntyre, Maribeth Gandy, and a number of graduate students are creating an AR development environment called DART, and we are using that environment to support the design of AR experiences. We believe that AR can be a new media form for for informal education, artistic expression and entertainment.

The AR user typically wears a headset, similar to that used for Virtual Reality. The difference is that with AR the user can see her physical environment; the computer overlays information or graphics in her field of view. Blair MacIntyre and I have been exploring the domains of education and entertainment by blending digital video of actors and sound into the AR view. Examples described in the DART web site include: Alice's Adventures in New Media and Three Angry Men.

We have also been developing a theoretical framework for our experiments in experiential AR. In particular we are offering a new "operational" definition for Benjamin's concept of aura. We believe that AR experiences can be compelling if they exploit the aura of the culturally significant places.

Our papers and conference talks include:

MacIntyre, Blair, Maribeth Gandy, Steven Dow, and Jay David Bolter. "DART: A Toolkit for Rapid Design Exploration of Augmented Reality Experiences." Conference on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'04), October 24-27, 2004, Sante Fe, New Mexico.

MacIntyre, Blair, Jay David Bolter, and Maribeth Gandy (2004) "Presence and the Aura of Meaningful Places" 7th Annual International Workshop on Presence (PRESENCE 2004), Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain, 13-15 October 2004

MacIntyre, Blair and Bolter, Jay David, "Single-narrative, multiple point of view dramatic experiences in Augmented Reality," Virtual Reality (2003) 7: 10-16.

Moreno, Emmanuel, MacIntyre, Blair, and Bolter, Jay David. "Alice's Adventure's in New Media: An Exploration of Interactive Narratives in New Media" (CAST'01), Bonn, Germany, September 21-22, 2001.

MacIntyre, Blair, Bolter, Jay David, Moreno, Emmanuel, and Hannigan, Brendan. “Augmented Reality as a New Media Experience”. In International Symposium on Augmented Reality (ISAR 2001), New York, NY, October 29-30, 2001.

MacIntyre, Blair, Lohse, Marco, Bolter, Jay, and Moreno, Emmanuel. “Ghosts in the Machine: Integrating 2D Video Actors into a 3D AR System.” In 2nd International Symposium on Mixed Reality, Yokohama, Japan, March 14–15, 2001.