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Art with a capital AR

The Festival of the Impossible explores what may be possible with augmented reality.

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James Martin
James Martin is the Managing Editor of Photography at CNET. His photos capture technology's impact on society - from the widening wealth gap in San Francisco, to the European refugee crisis and Rwanda's efforts to improve health care. From the technology pioneers of Google and Facebook, photographing Apple's Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai, to the most groundbreaking launches at Apple and NASA, his is a dream job for any documentary photography and journalist with a love for technology. Exhibited widely, syndicated and reprinted thousands of times over the years, James follows the people and places behind the technology changing our world, bringing their stories and ideas to life.
James Martin
Festival of Impossible virtual reality
1 of 10 James Martin/CNET

Festival of the Impossible

Exploring the boundaries of reality this weekend, the Festival of the Impossible in San Francisco looks at augmented and virtual reality works by artists creating immersive worlds which bend the physical and digital.

Here, Elaine Buckholtz's exhibit In a Whirl (Studies in Perceptual Glitching) uses a series of mirrored glasses and refracted images to build a vision of reality that is not quite connected to the real.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
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Two Side of the Same Coin

Estella Tse's stand within her AR work Two Side of the Same Coin.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
3 of 10 James Martin/CNET

Intangible

Stuart Lynch's Intangible fills the empty room with a bright, colorful augmented reality natural world.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
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Faces(On)Display

Can Buyukberber's interactive exhibit uses face-tracking and facial gesture recognition to explore our self-representation in modern digital culture.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
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The Elements

Russel Brown's The Elements puts fire and water on display.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
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Robotic Voice Activated Wordkicking Machine

Neil Mendoza's Robotic Voice Activated Wordkicking Machine is an interactive exhibit that translates speech to words that fly across the screen, to be kicked by a physical mechanism.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
7 of 10 James Martin/CNET

Descent: Or Do Avatars Dream of Auto-Rigged Sheep?

Miniature bed sculptures act as platforms for artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo's friends, who have been translated to avatars. The AR animations tell the story of each personality as we observe their dreams.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
8 of 10 James Martin/CNET

World's Away

World's Away uses augmented reality technology to create a window into the George Melies 1902 work A Trip to the Moon, inspired by adventures of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and the use of technology to accomplish the fantastic.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
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Swingscape

Swingscape by Anna Landa and Joel Ogden suspends the viewer from a swing in the physical world while allowing her to soar through the virtual.

Festival of Impossible virtual reality
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Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis

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