Galeria Żak, Gdańsk
5.12.2019
Photos by Paweł Wyszomirski
The exhibition “Photosensitivity” consists of 11 handpulled silkscreen prints combined with 3D animation. It was my first experiment with augmented reality. Every visitor was encouraged to download a free mobile phone application called Artivive. Once installed, the viewer could point the camera of his or her phone towards the prints and see another layer of the artwork – a 3D animation.
Modern technology provides us a with a wide range of completely new tools that we can use in artistic practice. Thanks to an internship I did a couple of years ago at Grandpa’s Lab – a visual studio from Porto – I got interested in 3D animation and merging it with analog, static images.
I love manual, physical work – painting, drawing, and I am fascinated with connecting it with something that looks incompatible at first sight – digital videoprojection. What intrigues me in augmented reality is that to see the results of the fusion of the analog and digital we do not need specific light or professional equipment. We live in times where everyone owns a mobile phone – a personal projection screen.
Technology became a part of ourselves, it is an extension of our memory, knowledge, communication or – thanks to apps such as Snapchat or Messenger – even an extension of our looks. We can now add 3dimensional elements to our face, that read our expressions and detect our movements. I decided to use that technology to add one more layer to my silkscreen prints. A layer that doesn’t need paint, a layer that is only visible on the screen of a mobile phone.