Almar van der Krogt calls himself a Virreal Architect [Virreal a state between the real and virtual world]. In urban life, the individual continuously experiences the existence of the virtual. Some notes and observations:

– The use of  the transportation card in public transport is handy, but, it also reduces the possibilities for the conductor to anticipate and actively engage with the passengers.

– Private content becomes public. When attending a concert, people tweet pictures and soundbites: the real moves into the virtual. In the case of mass online mingling the virtual can become physical again.

– The individual can express himself through cloths, graffiti, tattoos. However, these expressions have limits. A T-shirt can be offending, graffiti can be ugly and too much tattoos disturbing. Here come the opportunities for the virtual. The digital tattoo can provide for wearable electronics. This is vividly put forward in the book Moxyland, that describes the technique of people wearing digital tattoos. Nano technology allows their skin to lighten up, and display images all over their body.

– We see augmented reality moving into our lives. Billboards mixing reality with the virtual:

– Other forms of augmented reality are Tweeps Around that makes you see Twitter messages around you and Recognizr, an application that people can use to recognize your face and make the link to your profile on Facebook or other network sites.

Almar van der Krogt works is designing an application that connects the virtual and the real. With prsn.nl (PeRSoN.NeL) you can select and artwork, that you virtually put on each morning, just like make-up and jewelry. The application will go live in September 2010.

Video below: talk by Almar van der Krogt at ‘Designing the Hybrid City’