"Encrypted Bodies: Augmented Fashion Gets Uncensored!"

Augmented Reality (AR) is increasingly changing our perception of the world. The exponential spreading of Quick Response tags, Radio Frequency tags and AR tags has provided ways to enrich physical items with an impressive amount of information, including 3D imagery. By a process of alignment, the codes can be read by digital cameras contained in handheld devices or goggles and add computer-generated contents to real objects in real time. Fashion has been among the most responsive domains to the new technology. Applications of AR in this field have already been numerous and diverse: from Magic Mirrors in department stores to QR tags and 3D features in magazines; from holographic fashion shows to advertisements consisting exclusively of more or less magnified QR codes. With AR bodies are, at once, augmented and replaced by the tags themselves. The latter aspect has strong legal implications: by encoding bodies and making them visible only to those who possess an AR device, tags can be turned into powerful tools to bypass censorship. My paper aims at investigating the linguistic, communicative and legal implications of this phenomenon.