For this project I used a picture of the art quad at San Jose state and reimagined it has pixel art. I added a character on fire to represent sort of a common analogy that students feel as well as adding words stating, “I’m Fine”. I then installed this reinterpretation into an AR space where I placed a marker at the vantage point in which I took the original picture so that the viewer could essentially view the environment through a new lens. The reason I represented this visual space in pixel art was to have an inherently digital art medium mask the physical space, as it is being viewed through a digital representation comprised of pixels. There is also the aspect that pixel art represents compression, or a loss of information. The character on fire as well as the phrase represent the headspace of a great number of people in this area in a very overt way. The idea of burning and stating being alright is the mental detachment that is common among people in stressful situations, a way of coping. This in itself is a simplification of much more complex situations where people have a number of different environmental stressors that represent the different mental struggles that they deal with. These feelings of detachment in one’s own environment are presented as this abstraction of reality. This area that so many are familiar with just becomes a symbol for these feelings and no longer becomes the shifting, living space that it is. That detachment removes a person from experiencing the space directly in the moment and abstracts it.
AR
Interactive