Art in the Liminal Space: A Conversation with Rob McCarty of illust.
Augmented reality is changing the terms through which digital art is encountered. No longer confined to screens, platforms, or virtual environments, digital works can now be anchored to streets, buildings, landscapes, and monuments, entering into direct dialogue with the physical world. In this context, location becomes part of the work itself.
illust. was founded around this expanded understanding of digital space. The platform allows artists and creators to publish images, video, sound, text, and 3D works into specific physical locations, creating experiences that exist somewhere between the material and the virtual. In doing so, it raises broader questions around site-specificity, participation, access, and public space. Who gets to place work in the world? How does meaning change when a digital artwork is tied to a particular site? What new forms of artistic agency emerge when physical intervention is no longer required?
.ART spoke with Rob McCarty, co-founder of illust., about the platform's beginnings, AR as an artistic medium in its own right, and the growing importance of spatial computing for contemporary creative practice. The conversation also touches on psychogeography, public art, digital ownership, and the idea of augmented reality as a liminal space.
illust. began from the idea that the physical world itself could become a canvas for digital expression. Can you take us back to the moment when that idea became something you felt needed its own platform?
Yes, when we started, I had just finished working as a consultant for Meta's AR Platform and my business partner was a creative partner at Snap. At the time, there was no platform for artists to have full agency over their augmented reality creations, and most AR experiences were siloed to native applications. We wanted to change that.
I'm interested in how illust. describes itself as AR publishing and discovery software, more than as an AR tool. What does it mean to publish something into physical space?
The act of publishing is a creative act; it requires not only the subject being published but also an author and a medium. We see AR as a new creative medium but also as a return to how "space" influences culture. We're no longer dealing with the mediated white walls of a gallery.
"We're no longer dealing with the mediated white walls of a gallery."
Anyone using illust. can anchor an image, video, sound work, text or 3D object to a location. How does the relationship between digital content and a particular place change the way we experience that content?
Space is deeply embedded into our human psychology. A memory palace is a spatial mnemonic technique that helps you remember information by placing vivid mental images along a familiar physical route; it's how we can memorize Pi out to 100 decimal points. Psychogeography says a city's urban layout can influence our emotional state. Walking in a spiritual leader's footsteps through a pilgrimage is said to forge a deeper religious connection. With space being part of the equation, creators can drive a deeper connection to their art with their audiences.
Do you see AR primarily as a tool for presenting art, or as an artistic medium in its own right?
It's a medium. Activating and viewing augmented reality is a participatory process. Because of this relationship between the artist and the viewer, ideas can be communicated in a deeper and more enriching way. Eventually we see most experiences being personalized to who's viewing it, opening a new way for experiencing the vivid.
How does the physical location become part of the artwork? When an artist anchors a work to a particular street, landscape, building, or monument, is that location effectively another artistic material?
100%. In fact, many works of art can only be rendered by scanning a specific logo, article of clothing, mural, or work of art. This opens the door wide open for providing additional meaning to the ordinary, or in the spirit of Détournement, hijacking meaning altogether. Train up the AR CV library to drop an AR sculpture on the White House Lawn; the world is yours.
Do you think we are still at the stage where artists are translating existing practices into AR, or are you beginning to see a generation of artists whose practice is fundamentally conceived through spatial computing?
Yes, I think we're moving past a static visualization of a Turbo Squid 3D model and into a more dynamic AR experience. That being said, if done well, a static 3D sculptural experience that has unique texturing, shadows, and a larger than life presentation on hallowed ground still gets us excited!
There are now more than 5,000 works anchored to the public AR map. Looking across everything people have created, have you seen uses of the platform that you never anticipated when you started? Is there one project or activation that fundamentally changed your understanding of what AR can do?
A couple come to mind but if I had to choose, I really liked our global collaboration on the UN's International Day of Peace event last year. We had over 50 works of art geotethered to Bryant Park in NYC. It was a global collaboration in the sense we had 27 countries share, through their art, what the concept of Peace meant to them. Iranian artists submitted their works through a VPN so they could get around the country's firewall. This particularly hits home as we're now in conflict. Using AR as a way to communicate our shared humanity motivates us.
AR allows an artist to place a work in front of a museum, in a public square, or beside a monument, potentially without physically altering the site or asking permission to install something there. Does that fundamentally change who has the right to create public space?
We want to remove all of the barriers required to give your story impact. The world is a playground for your art absent the traditional art world's supply chain and power dynamics.
"The world is a playground for your art absent the traditional art world's supply chain and power dynamics."
AR artworks occupy an unusual position: they are physically absent but spatially present. How do you think that changes ideas of materiality, site-specificity, and even public art?
AR is the liminal space. The idea we can manifest something from nothing doesn't have to be esoteric. Arthur C. Clarke says that good technology feels like magic; we're hoping to continue tapping into this, and to explore what it means for our relationship with the everyday world.
You think a lot about how we inhabit and claim digital space, and illust. chose .ART for its own digital presence. Why did you choose a .ART domain, and do you see a domain name as part of the way an artistic project defines its identity and territory in digital space?
Our augmented reality studio software is a canvas for creators. It only made sense for us to embrace this through the .ART domain (illust.art). There are other augmented reality projects available for business practices but ours is for the art community.
