MHC students show off invisible art

By Jeremy Appel on December 11, 2018.

jappel@medicinehatnews.com @MHNJeremyAppel

Medicine Hat College visual communications students demonstrated their invisible artwork projects Monday, which used augmented reality technology to aesthetically enhance different spots throughout the school.

The project, which uses the free HP Reveal app, allows users to view 14 spaces on campus through their phone, augmenting the artwork that’s already there.

“The invisible art that we’re showing today is going to be motion graphics that are overlayed onto the school environment itself, so we can hold up a phone or tablet and be able to see things that are triggered by the environment,” explained James Kuehn, the course instructor.

April Mandziak, a fourth-year student, created a Dada-inspired piece, which added moving graphics and audio to a painting of a totem pole. She described Dada-ism as “art for art’s sake.”

“It was fun to create a piece that was intentionally playful (and) a little bit chaotic,” said Mandziak.

Invisible artwork allows participants to explore campus and discover what they didn’t know was there.

“We have this hidden pieces of art placed all over the college and really anywhere around us there are these pieces that you don’t know exist until you find them,” she said.

Kuehn says this project provides students with an introduction to augmented reality, which is becoming increasingly prominent in the worlds of art and marketing.

“This is sort of on that leading edge of creative technologies that we’re using,” he said. “Certainly, companies are looking at, ‘How do we apply augmented reality to our business for marketing purposes, for artistic purposes?’ Even if you are a painter, you can go and develop that painting with an augmented reality on top of it.”

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