Augmented Reality and the Remediation of Meaning

Augmented Reality (AR), the overlay of virtual contents on physical objects and vice versa, poses new challenges to scholars of the humanities. While a multimodal analysis can effectively explain the interaction between the verbal and visual code, for instance in advertising and other media texts, AR seems to ask for an “augmented” approach that would take into account not only how images and words work together but also how the simultaneous perception of real and virtual layers may produce meaning in mixed environments. AR actually raises questions about traditional categories, such as foreground vs. background relations, interference and noise, semantic continuity and relevance. The problem of defining semantic coordinates or signalling the communicative function of semantic gaps is, for instance, vital to AR, since the alignment between virtual and actual objects, produced by the QR or AR tags along with systems of geolocalisation, is far from following a one-to-one correspondence. More generally, AR calls for a redefinition of the notions of cognitive environment and affordances. The changes brought about by AR can significantly be observed in locative games, where the technology seems to revive the dynamics of face-to-face communication, overcoming the boundary of monitors and making the augmentation a shareable experience. The presence of AR and QR codes may also suggest a return to the printed text. The article attempts to discuss the potentialities and the limits of this technology.