Augmented Reality In Hell’s Kitchen

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Although it would drive us insane to be completely conscious of it, our daily lives are saturated with countless advertisements and brand interactions. It's a corporate world, as a majority of the Supreme Court reminded us recently when it decided that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to making political contributions – only with more money!

Which is why this short film made by Keiichi Matsuda for his postgraduate architecture degree should both thrill and horrify you. Matsuda makes explicit what is usually implicit. Namely, that as consumers we are merely part of an extremely complex matrix. And that when technology inevitably makes computerlike eyewear available to us at a price you can afford, the world will look a lot like this hyperreal meeting of "The Girl From Ipanema" and Robocop in the kitchen of the future.

See you at the virtual show, dude.

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.