AR art is everywhere — you just need to know where to look
On the latest episode of digi-Art, artist Madi Piller takes us on an AR tour of Toronto
CBC Arts' new series digi-Art looks to the horizon to see what's possible with tech and art — charting a course led by creatives and innovators toward new worlds and ways of creating.
On the latest episode of digi-Art, host Taelor Joseph-Lewis opens the show at Wallace Emerson Park in Toronto … from the centre of a swirling blue cloud of animated spokes and dots.
No, the show wasn't filmed through an Instagram filter, but you'd be forgiven for thinking so. After all, the same technology we use to up our selfie game is just another example of augmented reality (AR) — the subject of this week's episode.
As a medium, AR's applications range from space exploration to pants shopping, and it's everywhere around us if you just know where to look. Heck, that digital environment at the top of the episode? It's actually a work of art — a site-specific AR installation created by Kate Wilson — and there are plenty more wonders like it that are hiding in plain sight throughout the city.
What is AR?
First things first, though. What is AR?
To answer that question, digi-Art met with Madi Piller, the artistic director of Pix Film Collective, a multidisciplinary art collective/studio in Toronto.
As Piller and Joseph-Lewis discuss on the episode, a lot of people get AR confused with another similar technology, virtual reality (VR). "So VR, you use these goggles," says Piller. But augmented reality? Think of it like this: it's a technology that lets us view the "real world" with an extra layer of information, perhaps computer-generated images that can be viewed through a device like a phone or a tablet screen.
For a lot of us, the concept is already familiar, and it has been for years. Think back to the summer of 2016, for example, and the worldwide frenzy around Pokémon Go. Remember when museums were still reckoning with their newfound status as PokéStops? Well, since the good ol' days of Psyduck hunting, AR has become an accepted tool among artists and arts institutions.
During the early part of the pandemic, AR exhibitions became a common "pivot" for galleries and arts festivals — ubiquitous enough to be roundly spoofed. But it's stuck around, nevertheless.
When Toronto's Nuit Blanche was forced to go all-virtual in 2020, they presented an AR version of the festival — but AR projects were still a part of their programming last fall, when the all-night event returned to the streets. Graffiti festivals like the Vancouver Mural Festival and Hamilton's Concrete Canvas have embraced the form too. (Concrete Canvas even invited the public to virtually contribute to an AR mural last summer, a digital "paint by numbers" project.) And now until Sept. 30, MOCA Toronto is presenting an international exhibition that's entirely dedicated to AR; Seeing the Invisible features AR sculptures by 13 artists including Ai Weiwei, works that can be viewed on a walking tour of the city's west end parks.
Take an AR art walk
On digi-Art, we get a closer look at another AR project that's happening right now in Toronto: an initiative produced by Pix Film in collaboration with Artificial Museum, an arts organization based in Austria.
Through Artificial Museum, artists have dropped their AR creations in locations around Toronto. Piller refers to the works as "artifacts."
"It's more related to the technology that it comes from, you know, and it's art and fact."
Artificial Museum collaborates with partners around the world to install similar "artifacts" in public places. There are 191 different participating artists listed on their website, and beyond Toronto, you can find Artificial Museum projects in Edmonton, Ottawa and Kingston, Ont.
The episode offers a closer look at a handful of Toronto projects, most located near Pix Film's HQ on Dufferin Street. To find them IRL, roam east from Dufferin through the parkettes in the Geary Avenue area. An interactive map can be found on their website. Use it to view the artifacts when you reach their designated locations.
In addition to Piller, artists Coco Guzmán and Marco Royal Nicodemo speak with digi-Art about the artifacts they created for Artificial Museum, and at the end of the episode, Joseph-Lewis offers a sneak peek at Josette Joseph, an AR project by Daphney Joseph. Located in Bellevue Square Park in Toronto's Kensington Market neighbourhood, the piece pays tribute to the artist's mother.
"AR is good. It's a new path. It's advancing in technology," says Piller. "I think it gives us possibilities of experimenting, I think it's a future of making memories concrete."
