xCoAx Exhibition: Brass Art TouchAR

TouchAR is an Augmented Reality artwork made for Apple and Android mobile devices. TouchAR invites the user to download the free app to activate images with animation and sounds. These include tracking butterflies, a leaping locust, an inhaling lung, and fingers of flame that invite repeated fingertip touch. The auditory aspects of TouchAR mix live capture of the artists’ voices with field and studio recordings to create electroacoustic soundscapes. The artwork brings together three-dimensional copies of the artists’ hands with collaged imagery drawn from environmental regeneration, the Tapestry of the Apocalypse, made in Angers in the 14th century, and historic, anatomical, and cosmological illustrations. The AR system was developed in Unity (during the Covid19 lockdown 2020-21) with the AR Foundation SDK utilising a combination of image and plane detection to augment each printed digital artefact. The artists use technology to suture analogue and computational art making, to explore ideas of touch and engagement with ecology in a technological society and address the deep past, present challenges and possible futures. TouchAR offers an embodied experience with AR as a means of enchantment.
Exhibition Venue Convento de São Francisco, Coimbra, Portugal