Interactive Media: in-situ augmented reality installation art, including video and soundscape.
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky -. Rabindranath Tagore
With my crossover project In the Bosom of my Days, I started looking for innovative ways to shape my work and show it to a wider audience. Evidently social media played a very crucial role in this research.
Intending to create a kind of instant, virtual presentation of my work in the middle of nowhere, I started focusing on (AR) Augmented Reality. In which I could visually add to the immediate environment my work in a full 3D appearance, letting visitors very directly participate in my visual language, starting from a simple URL - eventually evolving into virtual sculptures that can find their place in plain nature and evoke a kind of magical dream.
The DX-100A Cloudcatcher concept, abbreviated C'.
I've been experimenting with several animations including 3D objects, photos or even moving images and letting people participate in this project. My Cloudcatcher (C', DX-100A) became the most mature of these creations, it is also a very pure, nature-oriented concept.
This incredible virtual sculpture is a living being, almost four metres tall and it stretches to the sky. It captures the interplay between blue skies and clouds and translates this scenery into spinning, dreamy textures of an alien kind.
The Cloudcatcher's natural habitat is a lush green grassland, surrounded by trees and water. Despite its slender, woody legs, it can withstand even the brightest rain and wind. Visitors can admire the Cloudcatcher in their immediate vicinity.
Evolving from more geometric attempts, I was immediately blown away by the incredible power of this C' (abbreviated), 'DX-100A Cloudcatcher' concept. The idea of an alien living being that can only become alive on the visitor's personal smartphone is incredible. It's like my work becomes part of the very personal universe of someone I don't even know, which is nothing less than a kind of metamorphosis in my presentation.
This project has been part of multiple exhibitions at the ABK, Mortsel and the 'Metamorphose' group exhibition organized by Kappa at Cultuurcentrum Attenhoven, Hoevenen (curated by Josha de Vree), in the format of an AR installation that was viewable by all visitors.
Love, love for the clouds, is what the Cloudcatcher project is all about...