This is the Bestiary Book. It's an art project some lady made recently. It works by having a camera read the little bar codes in the the top corners of the page and changing the image that a projector is projecting onto the book. The implementation is kind of lame. She could have totally put video or animations or something. If she did, it would sure beat those lame-ass picture books that used to come with records that narrate the story and blast some annoying noise when you're supposed to turn the page.
But seriously... what's up with augmented reality recently and how did it get so awesome so fast? I only started hearing about it like less than a year ago. It was like some dumb Japanese software you could buy that came with a cube with different black and white patterns printed on each side. I think it was something like if you held up the cube to your web cam, some scantily clad cartoon French maid would appear on top of it. The thing cost like more than $50 though. Now, even the new Star Trek movie has a pretty awesome augmented reality thing on their promo website for free (you can check it out here).
