Augmented Reality coming to you soon. Grab a bat and beat some hookers!

Marc Owens’s augmented reality project “Avatar Machine” puts its users in VR helmets that display the world around them as though they were playing a third-person game, so that their own body is seen from behind. Owens theorizes that “The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.”

I don’t buy the argument that people will, somehow, forget they are in an AR device and suddenly start murdering people like some deranged nut job, but I will admit that several hours of Mario Brothers leaves me feeling the urge to eat every mushroom I see and shit coins out of my ass. Then again, where else would one shit anything, if not the ass?

Extra points if you can name the music in the background.

Here is another video showing, what seems to be a prototype. I particuarly enjoy watching the passersby anbd teir responses. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”