Andromeda is an augmented reality journey poem about stars, loss and women named Isabel, enabled by a unique software solution and a custom marker library. Augmented reality overlays digital imagery on physical objects and in this piece, the power of robust, multiple, simultaneous fiducial recognition with sound activated through proximity has been made easy to work with through the addition of a MAX/MSP interface called SnapDragonAR created in Fisher’s AR Lab at York University. It's a unique authoring environment and a wonderful medium for poetic expression.

Andromeda is the first fully realized poem written using the software, but is part of a larger suite of poems, tabletop theatre, web-viewable and immersive  augmented reality fictions being built by Fisher. Andromeda uses a found pop-up book, overlaid with augmented reality markers and the poem is brought to life when a reader, using a camera attached to a computer, unlocks the textual, video and audio elements associated with the markers -- the basic idea being that the camera ‘sees’ these symbols being explored and overlays digital content.  The resulting poem can be viewed on the computer screen or through a head-mounted display.  The documentation here is merely suggestive of the experience.

Creators of the SnapDragonAR software:  Andrew Roth and Andrei Rotenstein, under the direction of Caitlin Fisher and in collaboration Dr. Mark Fiala.