AR(t) comes alive at French artist Aurélien Jeanney’s newest augmented actuality exhibition Looki Look 

Getting into the artwork gallery holding my smartphone upright, discovering the right angle to watch the items by my digital camera shouldn’t be how I anticipated to take a look at artwork. As I inched slowly in direction of an exhibit titled Pool Get together or Aquanouba in French, a bit of mysterious music started to play from my telephone, adopted by shapes blinking, sliding and swaying on display screen. The sudden disappearances and reappearances of shapes introduced the customer a possibility to don the position of a seeker on this hide-and-seek sport/artwork. The intricately designed poster featured listed objects similar to a map, a coin, and a golden ticket, amongst others. 

The steps stay constant as we transfer from one paintings to a different created by French artist and graphic designer Aurélien Jeanney. His items characteristic recurring characters represented by geometric shapes, exploring numerous themes, starting from a Hindu temple impressed by his earlier experiences in India to catacombs . The target of this expertise is to identify all of the 12 hidden gadgets within the checklist throughout the ten posters on show. In direction of this finish, guests scan the artwork items utilizing a cell app designed by Jeanney himself, which utilises augmented actuality(AR) know-how. AR combines a person’s real-life surroundings with computer-generated content material to create interactive experiences. The AR exhibition titled Looki Look, was formally inaugurated by the artist on November 20 at Alliance Française de Trivandrum, Vazhuthacaud.

Looki Look is at the moment on at Alliance Française cultural centres throughout the nation as a part of their Digital November Pageant. The exhibition is impressed by a “look and discover sport” like The place’s Waldo, a British collection of kids’s puzzle books. The target of the sport is to discover a particular character from a crowd.

“The concept was to make it accessible to youngsters, mother and father and really outdated individuals so that everybody can have enjoyable with it,” says Aurélien. 

With over 16 years of expertise as an artist, Aurélien is an artwork director and multidisciplinary artist specialising in augmented actuality experiences by digital illustration. He has received a number of worldwide accolades such because the Grafika Award for design, Numix award and Cannes Lions award. He based Maison Tangible, a publishing home and gallery in 2015, and has labored on initiatives similar to constructing murals, youngsters’s books, an AR treasure hunt and a poster for the 2019 FIFA Girls’s World Cup held in France, amongst others. 

Aurélien, who has been fascinated by AR for the reason that starting of his profession, says his curiosity is “linked to my path as an artist.” He says, “I began my profession as a graphic designer, and later I learnt movement design. Once I determined to mix movement with tangible parts of artwork, AR gave the impression to be the easiest way to do it.” 

Early beginnings 

“Coming from a poor household, my dad was a tough employee in a manufacturing unit and was very sick on a regular basis. He didn’t perceive how I might do illustrations for a residing in any respect,” says the artist, who accomplished his artwork diploma from the Increased Institute of Effective Arts of Besançon, France. So far as Aurélien can recollect, he used to attract on a regular basis. “I needed to mimic Asterix and different comedian books. It was a ardour, and I needed to attract precisely like how I noticed them within the comics,” he remembers. 

The artist says, “Having labored as a freelancer for 16 years, I don’t really feel that I’m working. I’m all the time constructing issues. I see my work as enjoying with Lego bricks. I’m constructing geometric shapes, and I assemble them into one factor which results in one other, and it goes on like that.” 

Beta testing 

In 2023, Aurélien Jeanney toured India with an AR exhibition known as Midi Minuit, curating the works of 11 French artists. Because the exhibition was a hit, Alliance Francaise invited Aurélien to current one other present, this time that includes his personal works. “At the moment, I had a number of initiatives in tough draft, and Looki Look was one in all them. The aim was the exhibition, and I had ten months to do it,” he says. 

The exhibition at the moment consists of ten works, together with two primarily based on his experiences in India. “There’s a poster of a flower market impressed by the one I noticed in Bengaluru and the Hindu temple, which is a mixture of each temple I got here throughout throughout my journey. I used to be there within the flower market throughout Deepavali, it was like an explosion of colors and perfume; flowers in every single place.” Different themes embody artwork college, enjoyable honest, cinema metropolis and so forth.

Aurélien says the exhibition is at the moment in a beta stage and he needs to increase it with extra posters including hidden objects after workshops and checks with youngsters and adults. The artist needs to develop this AR expertise right into a board sport. He says, “My want for Looki Look is to construct a cardboard sport so that everybody can play it at dwelling with their household, youngsters and buddies.” 

He provides, “I additionally need to strike the correct stability within the problem of discovering the hidden objects throughout the posters. The concept is that if I am going to a brand new nation for an exhibition, I’ll make a poster for that location. I’m fortunate sufficient to have been invited to Estonia after India. I’ll design one other poster for Estonia as effectively. My dream proper now could be to create sufficient posters in order that I can have 10 posters only for that nation.” 

Looki Look exhibition is on at Alliance Française de Trivandrum, Vazhuthacaud, until December 18.