The Illusion Layer

Exhibition: Friday November 8th – Sunday December 15th

Boston Cyberarts is proud to present The Illusion Layer, an exhibition that highlights artists using Artivive to bring their 2D artworks to life. Artivive is a relatively new augmented reality app, out of Austria, which is designed for traditional 2D artists and animators to augment animations or videos on top of their paintings, prints, and murals without learning complicated code or a new programming language. Artivive is intuitive to use. For both the artist and the viewer, you don't have to know much about the tech in order to get straight to the content. The interface is simple and basically non-technical, however the results can be surprising and sophisticated. 

The exhibition will include original prints and drawings, both 2D and sculptural as well as images of some of the murals in the greater Boston area that incorporate the app. There will even be an augmented couch. 

Boston Cyberarts has been interested in the use of augmented reality (AR) in art making from its inception. Beginning in 2001, when University of Washington HIT Lab researcher Bruce Campbell presented his AR research called BCFlora at the Boston Cyberarts Festival central headquarters, we have presented AR art in the gallery and outdoors in public space. Most recently, Boston Cyberarts commissioned six works of AR art by Nancy Baker Cahill, John Craig Freeman and Will Pappenheimer as part of The Auto Show, the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy's public art program up for the year. 

Artists include Growth Spurt, Rob 'Problak' Gibbs, Sofie Hodera, William Russell Pensyl, Martha Rettig, Julia Rue, Sneha Shrestha, Abraham Evensen Tena, Jody Zellen and more.  

ABOUT THE WORKS

Breathe Life 3 by Roxbury-native Problak (Rob Gibbs) comes home with Breathe Life 3 a new mural at 808 Tremont Street. Representing happiness, hope, blackness, and kinship this is one of Rob’s largest works to date and incorporates his strong graffiti sensibility. Breathe Life brings visual encouragement to the neighborhood and radiates positivity. The kids in this piece have more than just those bright smiles to share with you! Watch the mural come to life through augmented reality and learn how you can spread Problak’s message of positivity across Boston.

The Pursuit of Happiness by Sofie Hodera and Martha Rettig is an augmented reality poster exhibition featuring more than 50 letter-pressed American presidential campaign slogans. Augmented reality brings to life the sometimes-unsettling and often-preposterous words of American political leaders from the past 200 years. As a whole, the posters portray the evolution of American values and inject a bit of humor into our current political climate.

putti by W.R. Pensyl is an augmented oil painting. It is part of series, “Homage to Karabekian” that spring from a quote from by the recurring fictional character in several of author Kurt Vonnegut’s novels.

We the Future by IMAGINE (aka Sneha Shrestha) was a mural created during Hubweek 2018 at City Hall Plaza. IMAGINE (aka Sneha Shrestha) is a Nepali artist who paints mindful mantras in her native language and meshes the aesthetics of Sanskrit scriptures with graffiti influences. 

Shadow Trees is a small, self-published book by Los Angeles based artist Jody Zellen. Composed of full color photographs of the shadows of trees in urban environments, Zellen creates a vocabulary of images where the natural environment overlaps the human constructed environment. The book includes a link to an app which has an animated cover in which enables the viewer to see the images come to life through augmented reality.

Grabado Aumentado: Llegada by Abraham Everson Tena is an augmented etching on paper.

The Borderline Mural Project covers a 200 foot long wall in the tunnels under the campus of MIT with murals and magic. The tunnel is a commonly used route between MIT Buildings 66 and E17 during bad weather. A useful connection between point A to point B,  Borderline aims to make the tunnels a destination. The magic comes in the form of augmented reality: viewers can use the Artvive mobile phone app to experience an extension of the imagery.

Growth Spurt’s The Big Comfy Couch investigates the absurdity of modern news consumption. The sofa, which exists as a multi-faceted sculpture, electronic, painting and augmented reality artwork, tangibly references the comfortable spaces we are in when exposed to unsettling news. We are prompted with calls to action while confronted with the lure of complacent comfortability. We see tragedy next to advertisements followed by entertainment next to disaster. We have the ability to scroll past or change the channel and by doing so, we become desensitized to the world around us. The Big Comfy Couch examines the way we process this information overload, resulting in questions about the times that are anything but comfortable.  This work was created collaboratively by Casey McNulty, Renee Silva, Keaton Fox, and Chloe Dubois.