The mantra goes: If it’s possible, someone will eventually build it. That statement rings true for everything from the weird and spastic games like Mosh Pit Simulator or hardware add-ons like the pulsating haptic skin from Omnipulse, and while I’m just not sure why ’80s Norwegian synthpop band A-ha really needed to be realized in AR, I feel so much better about the world now that I’ve seen it.
Created by Chip Sineni of Trixi Studios, the augmented reality app was built using Apple’s ARKit, a developer tool recently released by the company running on the iOS 11 beta that lets you create AR apps and games. Because of the wide-spread availability of Apple devices supporting the iOS 11 beta, the company claims millions of iPhones and iPads are already in the hands of prospective developers around the world. So it’s no wonder when weird and wild things come creeping out of the woodwork.
Reflecting what happens in A-ha’s “Take On Me” music video, a man beckons to you from the inside of a comic book, which then opens to the iconic hand-drawn world parodied in popculture ever since the music video’s release in 1984.
Like the inter-dimensional portals we’ve seen built using ARKit, the app lets you walk through to the ‘other side’ and experience the world just like in the music video.
In case you haven’t experienced the glory of ’80s synthpop first-hand: