Just like HTTP is an acronym for hypertext transfer protocol, HRTP is an acronym for hyperreality transfer protocol. As technology continues to develop at an accelerated pace, likewise do private interests take over visual and informational space for promoting their own agenda at a similar pace. It is not long until the notion of hypertext will evolve into hyperreality – such as Jean Baudrillard defined it in «Simulacra and Simulation» in the year 1981. Hyperreality will represent an incapacity of the conscious to distinguish between simulation/fiction and reality due to the equivalence of the two on the level of perception. In essence the simulation qualitatively offers the same stimuli to the senses. We are now at a cliffhanger between real and simulated, between physical and virtual reality as the technology becomes ubiquitous and accessible, and the augmented is making its way to the computers in our pockets.
In this context we will soon have available additional layers of reality, superimposed over one another, visible through the filters that are our mobile devices or other technologies. How long will it be until these layers are regulated just as the radio spectrum has been; and taken over for their exploitation by a limited number of agents. HRTP proposes a technological speculation or what one might call futuring through which one of these virtual augmented space layers is taken over preemptively for the purpose of cultural practices. It intends to suggest the ability and right of cultural actors to exert agency within these layers. Through contemporary mobile devices visitors can see virtual interventions in site-specific public space. The interventions, although accessible from anywhere through a browser are placed at specific geographic coordinates. When accessing the web page hosting the work the location of the device is being determined and the work in proximity is revealed. It is to be noted that this is a speculative prototype as current technology is still at the limit between hypertext and hyperreality and as such cannot be guaranteed to function on devices of all makes and models.
Current Works in this series