Vancouver Winter Arts 2021-2023

Overview

A three-year collaboration with Vancouver Mural Festival’s Winter Arts, creating AR public art across downtown Vancouver: a city-wide project with more than 20 artists in 2021, a slate of original collaborative concepts in 2022, and sponsored filters plus mural augmentation in 2023.

Client / Partner

Vancouver Mural Festival (Winter Arts), with Shape Immersive (2021) and, in 2023, Northwest Territories Tourism as presenting sponsor.

2021: City-wide public AR

A collaboration with 20+ international and Indigenous artists on a city-wide public AR project, with technical and user-interface breakthroughs in how the public discovers and activates AR art at street level.

2022: Original artist concepts

The 2022 festival involved a number of collaborative projects. We worked closely with the artists to develop and implement original concepts spanning body tracking, portals, morphing geometry, and face tracking.

2023: Sponsored filters and mural augmentation

For 2023 we created two AR filters sponsored by Northwest Territories Tourism (Landscape Portals and Aurora) and an AR mural augmentation for Indigenous artist Ocean Hyland’s Wind and Water.

Public Deployment Context

Outdoor, city-wide deployment each winter: murals, posters, windows, and plazas activated by the public on their own phones in street and weather conditions.

Result / Impact

A multi-year body of AR public art and the clearest demonstration of the studio’s core work: helping artists bring their pieces into AR, reliably, in public.