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Tracing the Sky

, 2019

video, 2:00 of immersive mixed reality installation - 3D scanning, projection mapping and mobile phones equipped with augmented reality software

video, 2:00 of immersive mixed reality installation - 3D scanning, projection mapping and mobile phones equipped with augmented reality software

Tracing the sky is an immersive mixed reality installation presented in Manchester in July. A hidden underground space in a busy city is transformed into an immersive sanctuary. Under a Victorian shopping arcade, a space void of physical content is filled with floating motion graphics emerging from the brick walls of the deep basement hideaway. Arresting imagery glides across the brickwork, vaulted ceilings and chambers of the subterranean location, filling the architecture with dreamlike skyscapes.

The work uses 3D scanning, projection mapping and mobile phones equipped with augmented reality software to allow the audience to interact with the projections.

Visitors will find themselves immersed in a fluid environment of simulated clouds and skies that change in response to how they interact with the installation via smartphone technology. Sounds generated from these interactions will add another dimension to the experience.

Tracing the Sky brings together in the same space, two contrasting elements: the sky (air) and architecture (earth). This encounter allows each element to accentuate the presence of the other, overlapping virtuality and reality, tangible and intangible, human-made and natural. Jiayu Liu combines art and technology, creating a poetic way for visitors to observe and interact with their surrounding environment. Jiayu invites them to consider the empty space not just in terms of what it has to show, but as a place to reflect on our relationship with the natural, in this case the atmosphere and encompassing skies.

Credits:
Artist assistant: Yishan Xiao
Technical Director : Louis Mustill
Lead Creative Developer : William Young
App Developer : Shaun Sahdev
Developers : Kyle McLean, Randal Vazquez & Elliot Woods
Production Manager : Nerea Castro
Project Manager: Louise Beer
Project Sound Design and Development : James Wilkie & Daniel James Ross
Projection Design:Jim Hadfield & Jack Longden
Technician : Thomas Begley
Chief Tinkerer: Arron Smith
Film Director: Matthew Watt
Composer : James Wilkie
Visual Designer: Zhiwei Wang

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