Making the visible invisible

I am an artist. I am a person who is really far away from technology kind of stuffs. I would say I am not really interested. I would rather paint water colour on a piece of paper. However, if you are an artist in 21st century, you have to keep updated. Because either technology needs artist (to avoid feeling uncomfortable looking at the Facebook AR face filter ) and the artists needs technology to keep people attracted to their works. That is why my uni tries to make students adapt to cutting edge art trends, and AR technology was one of them. I actually never heard of AR before even though I actually use it for everyday basis. Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are "augmented" by computer-generated perceptual information. Basically a visual image contains any sort of information so it can generate different world through it. Snapchat filters, Pocketmon go and QR codes are based on AR technology.

My tutor introduced this amazing smart phone app called Aurasma which you can create simple AR Contents with your phone. I had got to make something else through some kind of visual medium with this app so I started thinking what would be interesting if you make still image move when you get involved. Eventually, I came up with the customers in the restaurant I work.

The restaurant I work for is a Japanese Izakaya bar which is really informal Sake&Beer bar. I really like the vibe of it.

People never stop talking in this place. When I'm working there I always judge people what kind of people they are or what kind of relationship they are just to get out from boredom. And also secretly listen to their conversation as well which is the most fun part. Because I am a third party I can really analyse the conversations. And to be honest, most of the conversations are dumb. But I really love these dumb part of our life so I wanted to put very mundane, human conversations and thoughts. Therefore,I drew a scene of Bincho and create people's story based on the talk I have heard while I am working and coloured it on Photoshop.

That is how it works. You just put your camera on each people and they will start talking.

I personally really enjoyed this project a lot because I had so much fun drawing the place where I work and our chef was really pleased about my illustration so he bought a print and hung it up in the restaurant. Moreover art for me is an interaction with viewers so it was really satisfying that I can get to make the viewers guess about my illustration and figure out getting involved.

My illustration at Bincho!