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Our History of the Telephone

Augmented Reality
Interactive Photographic Print
with Custom Smart Phone Application

The viewer is presented with a digital, framed photograph of the chapter, “The Story of the Telephone” from the 1917 book, The Universal Book of Knowledge and Wonders. With a smartphone on a pedestal, setting up the scene of a phone ready to be used as a camera. Using Augmented Reality, what happens is when the phone is pointed to the photograph on the wall, a video starts playing of the book with the text slowly disappearing, leaving behind bursts of eraser debris behind with no evidence to how it’s happening.

In the age of smartphones, we have become accustomed to using a phone for a variety of different uses now. It’s no longer just a device used for vocal communication, it’s also used as a camera, a library, a phonebook, a video game console, a television, a music player, etc. When smartphone users see something they like, they tend to use their devices as a camera, ready to take a picture of what they see. This is very common in art venues. It’s assumed that more time could be spent to look at what they see later.