Experiments in AR Final: Distanced

For my Final Project I’m working with Nok Jangkamolkulchai, (full transparency, this is also my final for Electronic Rituals as well as for Video Sculpture) I am creating a collective Quarantine Journal that will live in a physical installation. This installation will make use of the Pepper’s Ghost effect which simulates a hologram floating in space with the use of a projector, a pane of glass and some tricky reflections.

(Sidenote: The final version of the project relies on me being able to access some equipment that was left on campus at NYU, so this is just a working prototype)

Initially I wanted to use AR to create walking tours of neighborhoods from people who were displaced due to gentrification. When Covid hit, it made it dangerous to think about being out in public to do anything, so the scope of the project had to shift. I made a few image-target based AR experiences to show what my quarantine had been like and decided I wanted to open the project up to community contributions.

Distanced is a physical installation that is made up of a collection of quarantine experiences. By projecting a short loop of someone in quarantine, accompanied by a clip of that person speaking about their experience, the goal is that somehow the shared experience is able to make sense of the time. If not make sense of it, at least describe it.

rough sketch of how the projection is displayed using Pepper’s Ghost

This period of time is going to be a weird thing to explain to people who aren’t here living through it with us. I want this to be a tool to understand at least a bit of what it was like and to go through it by assigning them a role in it.

For this prototype, I’m running everything in a Max/Jitter patch. As a placeholder for the copper boards being touched, I instead just run things from a single button press on my keyboard. Programming the patch to respond to the copper will be simple once I have access to the equipment. The prototype is made from cardboard, but I would like to have it made out wood for the actual piece. Inside of the cardboard is a mini projector that is pointed at a small mirror. That mirror reflects the projection through an angled glass pane onto a solid white surface. It is the reflection from that white surface, viewed through the angled glass that causes the projection to look as if it is floating in space, The Pepper’s Ghost Effect.

*For the randomization of the assets, I wanted to play with the number 19, but I was unable to get it working. This is something that I am still exploring and will be working on after I present this in class. For now I am just using the random function within Max, but figuring out my own system is a priority.