2033's Best Substitute Realities

A visu­al cat­a­logue of spec­u­la­tive enter­tain­ment appli­ca­tions for head-worn dis­play own­ers. Fea­tured in HOLO mag­a­zine‘s first issue.

With Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty paving the way to some seri­ous intru­sion of the dig­i­tal into irl-space, it also opens to new ques­tions on the dis­em­bod­i­ment of visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Though AR car­ries the idea of adding pos­si­bil­i­ties to real­i­ty, hence "aug­ment­ing" it, Sub­sti­tute Real­i­ties take things a step fur­ther by offer­ing a trans­la­tion of fan­ta­sized sit­u­a­tions into dai­ly life. It is a degen­er­ate mix­ture of today‘s forms of spec­ta­cle putting per­son­al fan­tasies in the spot­light, and mak­ing immer­sive and inter­ac­tive sce­nar­ios seam­less­ly blend into their user's phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment. Sub­sti­tute Real­i­ties aren’t life­like, or real­is­tic. Rather, they are accept­able ren­der­ings of one’s inac­ces­si­ble dreams, fetish­es, and absurd needs such as arti­fi­cial fam­i­ly mem­bers, self-stag­ing, roman­tic sim­u­la­tion, moral train­ing, edu­ca­tion­al real­i­ty shifts, sex­u­al sub­li­ma­tion, or just plain algo­rith­mic psychedelia.