Investigating Socio-cultural Specificity of Mobile Augmented Reality(MAR) : Four Participatory Properties to Build MAR Experience

Abstract

Despite the possibilities and popularity of mobile augmented reality (MAR) for everyday use in different social contexts, the lack of research regarding social aspects of MAR led this paper to focus on its cultural modification with MAR in social perspectives. More specifically, this paper analyzes certain attributes of participatory system connected to mobile augmented reality, and applied those attributes to each case study, so as to establish MAR's socio-cultural specificity. For the research purpose, this paper tries to find its specificity through a cultural anthropology approach, especially with focus on the concept of Turner's ritual process. In ritual process, participants would take a role not only as individuals but also as agents recognizing the social order. Here, the place where the ritual is conducted changes the meaning of physical space into mediated space. This traditional ritual ceremony meets a process of today's use of information that shares with other media and thus constructs new information and communication through mobile medium beyond notions of personal interpretation/application. As such, each procedural system is applied to case studies of mobile augmented reality in this paper.