It is near impossible to keep up with the torrent of hype and cheerleading regarding Augmented Reality (AR). I have to admit that don't pay much attention to most of the content on this topic that streams through my news reader – I'm simply not interested in the marketing-focused slant applied to anointed technologies of the moment. As Bruce Sterling warned in his At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry talk last summer: "get ready for the trough of disillusionment" as it is the next phase of the hype cycle for AR. Remember VRML? What about Second Life? The design community certainly dined at those troughs.

With that disclaimer out of the way, please note the above video by Keiichi Matsuda, who is currently studying at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Matsuda's short animation Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop depicts a disturbing culinary interlude where every inch of surface area is plastered with advertising. Space is further sliced up through intrusive informational displays that bombard the occupant with the every minutiae of quantitative information available on their possessions and activities. This is definitely amped up to an absurd level as one of the displays (like those of The Sims) tracks the hunger, thirst and bladder capacity of the individual whose perspective we are experiencing this space through. In another equally cynical moment, an interface is presented to our subject where they can control the "ad saturation" of their space and be compensated accordingly. There are also suggestions as to how users might interpolate between domestic space and an updated 3D version of the traditional desktop GUI (recognize the wallpaper background of that scene?). This is all delivered with a wink and after suffering through countless optimistic/uncritical AR vignettes it is great to see one with a sense of humour. [via: ReadWriteWeb]