YOON.

Client : Jina Park (Painter), NON Berlin
AR Direction/ Prodution / Developer : Anan Yoon Lee
2020

In The Guardians of Cabinets, a solo exhibition by Jina Park, visitors are invited to immerse themselves in their personal cabinet of curiosities. Combining painting with augmented reality, the exhibition interrogates our relationship to foreign cultures. This project is an opportunity to discover how painting and augmented reality are combined and implemented as a harmonized show from the AR designer’s work aspect.

I was commissioned by the artist Jina Park to create an AR application for her solo exhibition organized by NON Berlin. I produced a site-specific AR for her paintings and the exhibition space. Her paintings are used as an image tracker and expanded to the physical space of the exhibition.
The exhibition held from 14th until 30th August 2020. The AR added a playful yet uncanny layer to Jina Park’s artworks and suggested the possibility of AR which can be collaborated with various forms of artworks and exhibitions.

To extend Jina Park's concept of ‘collections' to physical space, I took the motif of the geodesic dome, the spherical cage which is used for glasshouse of botanical/zoological gardens.

I framed the entire exhibition space with this invisible cage - It just shed the shadow and stages the exhibition space into a closed ecosystem which is extended from the Painter's personal collection.

Its digital environment stages the white cube of Meinblau into the Atmospherium*. The lights, shadows, soundscape, the weather will influence both paintings and surroundings(including the visitors), connecting the spatiality of abstract painting and of the exhibition space.

* An optical device designed to project images of atmospheric phenomena.

photo by Kichun Park

The exhibition took place on the project space Meinblau, which is located in the centre of Berlin. The building has a big window on the ceiling which brighten the space up. And the visitors can have an overview of the whole exhibition from 2nd floor.

I used those structures to let the visitor experience various perspective, and also immerse into space and digital imagery.

View from second floor

The AR is built with Unity and Vuforia.
I used the paintings as image targets and base of the entire scale of the scene. 3 main pieces were chosen and used as image target. Based on their scale and location, I adjusted the entire scale of the scene so that it fits with physical exhibition space. Each painting activates different character animations and soundscapes.

It was the most important part to collaborate with panting works.
To avoid covering up or hide the original painting with a digital image, I used the transparent shadow as the main element. It overlays on paintings and exhibition space and mixes the analogue and digital materiality.
I made the shadow masks on the figures and created a spacial illusion on their flat surface.

The animals have simple AI to fly around the viewer, jump out from painting and wander around the exhibition space, or repeat the same movement which reminds us the oppressed animal behaviour.

Almost every movements of animals are generating in realtime, using Unity’s Navmesh feature. The unexpected encounters let visitors be more immersed in it.

To promote the exhibition, I made the brochure as an extra image target and let people download the application on their smartphone.

I modelled the inner structure of the Meinblau and staged small sneak-peak of the exhibition.

photo by NON Berlin