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Augmented Reality Sneakers Are Coming for Your Social Media Feeds

What happened?

Up until now, augmented reality has projected things into open spaces, or stuck masks or animal ears onto moving faces. But one artist is working to change that. He wants his augmented reality designs to be something people wear in the world between physical and virtual: social media. Unlike virtual reality, which transports wearers of VR headsets into other worlds, augmented reality brings digital ideas into the physical realm. Interior designers use the technology to visualize how a room would look filled with furniture before they buy it. Graphic designers use it to make silly filters on social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. Game developers use it to spawn 3D avatars in the user's own home. App developers are using it to make digital tools to measure and map real structures.

Why is this important?

Zack Kroll, aka Bald Boy, through a series he calls SatARday, which runs every Saturday (hence the name), creates AR sneakers he gives out for free via Snapchat. There, users can use the filter to "wear" his designs. They stick to your feet as you walk, adapt to shadows and light changes, and reflect whatever's nearby. "Right now, the AR filters are a way of building community and having people understand the connection between the physical and digital world," he says. "There's no 'buying' attached to it right now, but in the very near future, once I get enough people accustomed to the technology and excited about the digital world, then I'll be selling wearables on OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces."

"Wearables," a term used in the NFT (non-fungible token) context to describe something only digital avatars can wear, doesn't come with real-world benefits. You can't walk around flexing your new NFT sneakers. Sure, you can implement them in some apps for posting on your social media profiles, but Kroll's existing project is a better look, in my opinion, at the future of digital fashion.