Psychedelic Virtual Toads Invade Regional NSW & Victoria

Colonies of psychedelic virtual toads have sprung up at sites in regional centres throughout Southern NSW & Victoria. The toads are invisible to the naked eye, but if a person with an iPhone, Android or Nokia smartphone (and an app called the Layar Reality Browser) visits the site of a colony, they can see these toads in all their glory through the camera on their phone.

Why is such a bizarre occurrence taking place? Because the toads are colonising between the Sydney and Melbourne showings of (Un)seen Sculptures, an exhibition of 3D virtual art by Australian and international artists that has infiltrated the real world via the free mobile phone Layar app.

The Layar Reality Browser gives 3D virtual artworks a geographical location in the real world, and uses a technique called augmented reality to enable people at that location to see the works on their phones as if they were superimposed on the surrounding environment. They can then view the works from any angle, walk around them, and even interact with them. (NB: The app will only work on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, Android or recent Nokia smartphones.)

The toads are part of a work called Sex and Death Bufo Colony by US artist Will Pappenheimer, which originally debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of the We AR in MOMA exhibition in October 2010. This initiative is the brain child of Sydney based AR artist Warren Armstrong and is supported by d/Lux Media Arts.

Warren Armstrong is a new media artist whose practice explores web-based art, sonification and augmented reality. His most recent works include the Information Virus (2010), an 3D augmented reality work that was featured in the Bushwick Augmented Reality Intervention 2010 in Brooklyn, New York; and the Twitterphonicon/Twitter Hymn Book (2010), an installation that converts Twitter updates into music which he collaborated on with Sydney composer, Amanda Cole. This work was exhibited as part of the New Interfaces in Musical Expression conference in Sydney, and was a finalist in the 2010 Blake Prize for Religious Art.

See the toads invading the Gagosian in New York and watch them come to a regional gallery near you.

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