Day's Not Over Yet Augmented Reality

In the summer of 2022, I created a series of Day's Not Over Yet Augmented Reality Installations over the Hudson and East River in New York City. They are inspired by the installation Day's End by David Hammons. Over the Hudson I created an installation within the installation, and then another series overlooking Manhattan in Williamsburg.

I developed the augmented reality installations using Maya and Unity 3D. In Unity 3D I created an app that runs on Android phones where the user places art objects on real surfaces in real-time.

Apple devices are currently supporting very interesting and sophisticated features and I may develop the apps for Apple devices in the future. Apple devices feature human occlusion so when people walk in real space they can walk “in front of” or ”behind” the art.

In these works, I explore the overlap of constructed reality + digitally contrived reality = synthesized virtual reality which exists only in the space of the user’s phone. A private reality of the artist due to its digitalness can become a shared reality.

I have always been fascinated with digital landscapes, entirely artificial ephemeral constructs that I used to inhabit as a commercial video game artist for many years. Even more fascinating is the overlap of digital constructs over the megalopolis reality of New York City. In this series, I combine and develop these two obsessions.

The installations use the uber constructs of hyper-capitalism like skyscrapers and make them the two-dimensional background of the work. Megamillion skyscrapers shrink and recede like tilt-camera filmed dollhouses of the Lego city. Augmented Reality seems real and the Cityscape fake.

Over the Hudson river I created a virtual set in real time inside Day’s End by David Hammons. An installation within the installation.