Video: When Augmented Reality Attacks

Today's episode of Boing Boing TV features Marc Owens, a design student at the Royal College of Art, who last year designed Avatar Machine, a suit designed to let wearers view themselves as a third-person avatar while walking around the real world. The system was meant to question whether such a set-up would provide "a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment."  In an update to the project, Owens took the suit to the geek mecca of Harajuku in Tokyo. He behaves a little abnormally, but more interesting is the response from everyone else around him--namely that dressing up like a superhero tends to make Japanese thugs want to beat you up. Stay tuned after his test run for an interview with Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin.

[via Boing Boing TV]

Comments

[Komuso Tokugawa]

I saw this guy stalking around harajuku a few weeks back and immediately thought he was just playing some form of Location based street game with a twist of real time web streaming. I should have hung around...

Please get some facts straight.

"In an update to the project, Owens took the suit to the geek mecca of Harajuku in Tokyo"

The real geek mecca is Akihabara, more commonly know as Electric town.
Harajuku, while it attracts some cosplay girls who hang out near the station, is a very cool diverse hangout of which geeks are in the minority and bands, dancers, and people having a chill time in the park are in the majority.

"He behaves a little abnormally, but more interesting is the response from everyone else around him--namely that dressing up like a superhero tends to make Japanese thugs want to beat you up."

He behaves more than a little abnormally, especially in an area of Tokyo where it is common to see wild costumes mixed with the utmost politeness and considerate behaviour to other people.

and the Japanese thugs?

I don't think so. The so called "Japanese thugs" are in fact a bunch of long time Yoyogi park regulars, easy going "Happy Days era" style dancers doing their own thing, until some TOOL in cosplay outfit [which is a yawn factor around that area] stalks into their dance space and deliberatly provokes them.

Reading pseudo academic artwank rubbish such as "The system was meant to question whether such a set-up would provide - a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment-" is a complete cop out and does nothing to legitimise what looks more like a deliberately pre-planned attempt to get some "controversial" youtube footage by pushing normally reserved japanese into a confrontational situation and filming them for fun. His whole body language from the brief Real life observation I has was of someone on a mission.

As some other japanese based commentors have noted on other blogs related to this topic, I'd like to see him try that at some place when the black vans of the japanese ultra nationalists are out in force with some real yakuza street muscle "thugs" hanging around.

Then we might see some gibs...

Make a change from lame footage of a rude cosplay toolbrain deliberately harassing girls and rockabilly dancers.

[Joey Seiler]

Thanks for the more locally informed update. That's definitely a different perspective than I got from the Boing Boing update.