Life in Nowhere is a series of augmented animations created to be a part of the Romantic App 2.0: A virtual exhibition inside the Art institute of Chicago. The project explored the augmented layer as a medium for physical installation. Paintings inside the Art institute were augmented with animations using augmented reality platforms such as Snapchat. More information about the Romantic App 2.0 can be found here. The following is a statement for Life in Nowhere.
When Georges-Eugène Haussmann rebuilt Paris, all the old alleyways and narrow streets were destroyed. Animistic Spirits living in such alleyways were evicted out of their homes. Dispossessed, they took up residence in romantic paintings, squatting in the works of arts, forever yearning for where their lives breathed, struggled, and dreamed.
This project comes from an idea I dubbed “animism of space”: The spaces we inhabit have spirits of their own. Baudelaire expresses the idea in his poem, The Swan. A swan is freed from a cage. It walks on the new Paris’ dry pavements. It yearns for water just as Baudelaire longs for old Paris. If Where life breathed and struggled and dreamed is gone, the life is gone with it. In the poet’s mind, The alleyways live, and the swan is the spirit of the old alleys.
Spirit of life became a central concept in examining space during the Romantic movement in the 19thcentury. Landscapes grew into a more direct expression of the relationship between the dweller and the dwelling. Optics, intuition, and iconographic contemplation became a language constructing the dream space in which human minds live. These languages far reached beyond their time of birth as we still depend on them in making virtual and augmented spaces. It is altogether fitting that these creatures squat in augmented planes inside Romantic landscapes.
Augmented space does not replace the physical. It starts where the physical becomes inhabitable by imagination. It is constructed with a goal to restore the forgotten; a refuge where human mind may dream. That dream, in this case, is to live.
Life in Nowhere: Introduction, 2019
Augmented Reality image superimposed on
Inside the Colosseum (1818-1828) by Franz Ludwig Catel
Featured inside the Art Institute of Chicago gallery 221 via Snapchat