Defacing the ‘Balloon Dog’: Art, Algorithmic Culture and Augmented Reality

This chapter examines gamification through selected artworks that deploy augmented reality (AR) techniques. Gamification is approached as a form of ‘algorithmic culture’ in which algorithms can be, to varying degrees, both positively guiding and negatively coercing a user. After analysing examples of gamification in the mobile entertainment industry, such as Snapchat and Pokémon GO, examples from contemporary media art that blend augmented reality techniques with algorithmic structures and tendencies are investigated. This research considers AR as a processual entity, rather than a discrete form or technical medium. Its interfaces are not simply dynamically engaged across the physical and the digital but entangled with social and cultural forces.