Random Musings and a Case Study: Michael Naimark and the Development of Spatial Augmented Reality

Author's note: This article was written as an assignment for DEA2510: History of Design Futures, a class taught by Chad Randl for the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. This makes it a little more constrained to the deliverables of a prompt as opposed to natural paths of inquiry. It seeks to reflect on an innovation of a predictive nature presented between 1985 and 2005 and trace the development following that prediction to the present, in this case tracing Michael Naimark's 1984 “Spatial Correspondence in Motion Picture Display”. The subject of spatial augmented reality is a hot topic within contemporary themed entertainment, and as such I felt it is worth including on this site. I do not claim for this history to be comprehensive, rather I find that its value is in its focus on the trajectory of Naimark's ideas, specifically.

Spatial augmented reality, more commonly known by its commercial name “projection mapping”, is the practice of integrating synthetic information onto the real environment, generally through film or video projection onto complex surfaces (Bimber and Raskar, 2005). The technology is the product of an intersection of the larger histories of film projection and virtual reality but has split to become a separate technology in its own right (Jones, n.d.). This paper will examine the earliest theorized example of spatial augmented reality, Michael Naimark’s “Spatial Correspondence in Motion Picture Display”, as well as the trajectory of the technology’s development compared to Naimark’s predictions for its future.

Random Musings and a Case Study: Susan Sontag's Camp

In 1964, Susan Sontag published “Notes on ‘Camp’”, considered the first attempt to discuss Camp in writing. Sontag labels Camp as a sensibility, “distinct from an idea” (para. 2), she notes, in that “any sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an idea” (para. 4). As such, she remains skeptical in applying concrete conclusions and definitions to Camp, choosing to forgo a formal essay in favor of a series of notes. In these notes, Sontag describes Camp as above all else the “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration” (para. 2), then proceeding to elaborate on the ways in which Camp manifests, operates, and differs from similar concepts.

“Notes on ‘Camp’” remains influential for Sontag’s adept understanding of how Camp compiles itself from cultural objects as a “logic of taste” (para. 4). In this article, I want to begin to examine Sontag’s notes and try to present Camp’s usefulness in the context of themed entertainment. To do so, I will be looking specifically at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, where the broad themed focus on the movie industry is construed through a lens of abstraction that, I argue, is Campy in accordance with Sontag’s theory. From this case study, I hope to illuminate ways in which the harnessing of Camp serves as a powerful attracting force for the general public.