Open Space - six online works

Six new AR works commissioned as part of Open Space

A 3D scan in colour of a woman in a black dress, sitting, look down, surrounded by plant-like tentacles in white

Open Space - six online works

Six new AR works commissioned as part of Open Space

Following a series of workshops for selected artists held in December, run by The Photographers' Gallery in partnership with curator Zaiba Jabbar (HERVISIONS), we have commissioned six new Augmented Reality works. 

The final works will be launched monthly on The Photographers' Gallery website and social media from May 2022.

Each commission will also be supported by a series of one-to-one online guidance sessions with established curators and AR artists from the Open Space programme.

A 3D scan in colour of a woman in a black dress, sitting, look down, surrounded by plant-like tentacles in white

Nella Piatek

XRiS-00222 explores the entanglements of the metaverse with the meatspace to reflect on how augmented reality filters can become means of connecting with archived digital identities encapsulated within these digital media. This interactive experience, through a sonic narrative and augmented reality filter, opens a communication portal between a visitor and a cyberwitch avatar. The audience then takes part in exploring an intimate story, as the cyberwitch reflects on cyborgism, the archive as a sanctuary and spiritual technology.

@nellapiatek

nellapiatek.com

Explore XRiS-00222
A white glossy mannequin holds its arm up in front of a colourful striped background, with potted plants

Georgia Janes

Garden of Elowan is a speculative virtual installation imagining a future in which nature has fused with digital technology. Inspired by cyborg botany, the work will immerse visitors into a fantastical realm housing a collection of futuristic plant species & exploring themes of digital sentience, speculative evolution, and the post-digital landscape. Garden of Elowan seeks to playfully question the blurring boundaries between what we experience as ‘real’ and ‘natural’ in an increasingly digitised world.

www.itsgeorgia.co.uk 

@pbjtoast

Explore Garden of Elowan
A 3D female avatar, with skin comprised of a lava-like red and yellow surface, stands in front of a grey background, long orange hair covering her face

Sarah Ejionye

Afrogenesis is an adaptation of three different short stories from ‘Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2001)’, in the form of Augmented Reality filters.This artwork is a love letter to black science fiction, as well as providing the opportunity for a new generation to discover and fall in love with these stories.

@sarahejionye
sarahejionye.com

Explore Afrogenesis
A digitised Chinese doorway opens onto a sepia image of an apartment block framed by foliage, suspended in a VR loading screen set within a grid and the silhouette of a mountain range.

Meitao Qu

Better than Doraemon’s Anywhere Door, a portal filter promises to stitch together real and virtual worlds. Playing with immersive nature of AR, this work highlights the spectator’s willing suspension of disbelief to contemplate the seeming limitlessness of digital realities against its self-contained boundaries.

@mt_qu

Explore Dreaming of Red Mansions
A glitchy, unfolded face is cut out against a black background

Leda Sadotti

Beautified-AI speculates the impact of fabricated internet user profiling, forming these AI-generated portraits into complex, digitally woven live beings. The project establishes a community for these AI-generated profiles where rather than using the technology as a commodity in order to take advantage of deep fake techniques, the synthetic beings are characterised as complex and layered within the virtual environment. Beautified AI debates the role of synthetic AI imaging, using AR technology to politicise these fabricated profiles. 

https://lsadotti.cargo.site/ 

@ledasadotti

Explore Beautified AI
A virtual tree branch and leaves swirl in a 3D space

Alexis Parinas

Sawsawan is an AR world filter that pays homage to the dipping sauce culture integral to Filipino food culture. This interactive Instagram filter takes what Filipino food writer Doreen Fernandez calls a “galaxy of flavor-adjusters” as a point of departure to conjure a distinct world of bloom and possibility whose creation insists on involvement and participation, a creation that insists on community. The user is invited to traverse space and time to savour the “sawsawan”.
 
Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England

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