2 weekends in April featuring a pop-up art exhibition displaying the development of the augmented reality app that triggers local heritage that’s either demolished or endangered Apparitions AR. The source material of vintage postcards, draftsman’s sketches and lithographs will be shown transforming into augmented reality artworks, modelled in 3D and games engine software. An art display of large-scale reimagined multiview postcards combining Edwardian portraits and contemporary scenes is available to order, they will also be projected in an evolving dreamy fantasy version of St Leonards and Hastings.
24/09/2022 – Augmented Art drop in exhibition & symposium
Apparitions app and Pioneer are relaunching with new features and additional assets ( Prince Albert himself ) in this event on Saturday 24th September from 2pm – 9.30pm, held in Ugly Duck, 47-49 Tanner Street, Bermondsey. Free from 2-7pm then tickets for artist talk – information here :
This one-day exhibition showcases the cutting-edge augmented reality artworks of Luciana Haill and is the London premiere of Pioneer, an ambitious, augmented reality (AR) artwork which explores urgent contemporary themes around innovation, hubris and technology elitism through a reflection on Victorian engineering. The work juxtaposes Victorian engineer Magnus Volk’s unique seagoing electric train on stilts called ‘Pioneer’ (nicknamed ‘Daddy Long Legs’ (1896-1901) to contemporary mobile technologies such as augmented reality, 5G and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network.
Also, on show will be a newly updated version of Haill’s earlier series of augmented reality artworks entitled Apparitions, inspired by three Victorian landmarks lost in wars, storms and during rapid gentrification.
The artworks can be triggered using special apps and images or actually at the sites of lost heritage via geotagging. In the case of Pioneer, the AR artwork is geotagged in such a way that the seagoing train actually appears to travel along the original route of the tracks (between Brighton and Rottingdean) as you walk the coastal path.
The works are accompanied by immersive soundscapes which can be experienced using headphones or a wearable SUBPAC tactile audio system.
The artist, Luciana Haill will be present and happy to demonstrate the works and answer questions.
In 2018 I launched Apparitions with a special smartphone app for iOS and 3 bygone experiences. Now I have a new addition – the artwork ‘Pioneer’ has been awarded a grant from @ace_national. I will be able to update Apparitions_AR for Android and Apple smartphones adding this latest bygone model and will launch it at @DigitalBrighton in October 2021. It is an ambitious, outdoor, augmented reality artwork exploring urgent contemporary themes around innovation, hubris & technology elitism #AR#Art
A visit to the concrete ‘Sound Mirrors’ in Denge Kent inspired me to combine my enquiry into emerging virtual digital techniques with obsolete & lost heritage as I am an artist fascinated by the relationship of history, new technologies, memory & dreams. These spectacular remnants of a dead-end technology from WWI would tell more of a story if combined with augmented reality.
Funded by a ‘Grantium’ from The Arts Council of England (focussing on my hometown of Hastings & St Leonards) I designed and produced an ‘augmented reality(1)’ (AR) application called ‘Apparitions’. It triggers spectral artworks – 3d models with anachronistic soundscapes when viewing special vintage postcards of the sites using smartphone cameras. Digitally Elevating traditional souvenirs of obsolete sites into steganographic missives, described by Mark Fisher’s as ‘hauntological(2),’ embedding the past into the future so it may be interrogated as a simulation and a simulacrum(3).
There are three experiences allowing a glitching, time travel, potentially creating a nostalgia for a future we cannot experience and each is accompanied by a soundscape encapsulating its lifetime: St Leonards Pier (destroyed in WWII) & the Albert Memorial (lost to fire in 1973) and Edwardian beach huts (destroyed by storms 1907).
Until the 1960s the act of looking back, or nostalgic reminiscing was seen by the medical profession as a pathological aspect of ageing (causing or exacerbating depression & disengagement from everyday life). American Psychiatrist Robert Butler challenged these views popularised the term ‘Ageism.’ The platform of ‘AR’ enables me to exploit this and deliver an expandable series of artworks in a significant exploration of the impact of cutting edge ‘augmented reality’ technologies on memory & nostalgia.
As contemporary degrading or invisible urban palimpsests, they offer several levels of engagement: uncanny bygone landscapes both real and imagined, self-selecting experiences that also include factual historical presences anchored in surreal soundtracks. Apparitions are visual, sonic and metaphysical, their role as artworks is also to preserve and share social memory and lost heritage as simulacra during rapid gentrification.
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real-world are “augmented” by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory, and olfactory.
The overlaid sensory information can be constructive (i.e. additive to the natural environment) or destructive (i.e. masking of the natural environment) and is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment.
In this way, augmented reality alters one’s ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user’s real-world environment with a simulated one. Augmented reality is related to two largely synonymous terms: mixed reality and computer-mediated reality. -Wikipedia
Baudrillard J. (2009) The Precession of Simulacra. In J. Storey (Ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader (4th ed.) (pp. 409-415). Harlow: Pearson
Hello everyone – The HASTINGS & ST. LEONARDS SOCIETY have rescheduled the event in the piano room ( left at reception) of The White Rock Hotel, 10th June 2019, free to attend, membership available also,
1. Main Topic: John Bownas (H & St. L Society committee member and Town Centre Business Improvement District Manager) reports on the activities of BID and outlines the strategy for the Town Centre’s future. Followed by questions and discussion
2. Chris Lewcock: update on the St. Leonard’s Church (area) and West Marina former bathing pool site situations.
3. Luciana Haill: Presentation on the ‘Apparitions’ art project. Apparitions is a new augmented reality app and art project that reveals the ghosts of historic lost landmarks – for example, the Albert Memorial Clock Tower and St. Leonards Pier – evoking a “nostalgia for lost futures”. Artist Luciana Haill will demonstrate how AR and digital new media art have the ability to preserve the architecture and social memory beyond a site’s physical demise. In this time of change in a seaside town that rates high on historical assets but economically low, she reinterprets local lost heritage from books and museums into experiences on smartphones to reach a wide audience.
All welcome but please advise of your attendance in advance so that we have idea of number attending.
Drinks purchased at the bar may be brought into the meeting.
H & St. L Society committee – Promoting Our Heritage and Civic Pride
“Apparitions” – New augmented reality artwork reveals iconic lost Hastings landmarks
Apparitions is a new augmented reality app and art project that reveals the ghosts of historic lost landmarks in Hastings ( The Memorial clocktower), St Leonards (the pier) and Bexhill ( beach huts ) evoking a “nostalgia for lost futures” Artist Luciana Haill will demonstrates how AR and digital new media art have the ability to preserve architecture and social memory beyond a site’s physical demise. In this time of rapid changes in a seaside town that rates high on historical assets, she reinterprets local lost heritage from books, museums into experiences shared on smartphones to reach a wide audience.
Augmented reality Artworks exploring gentrification in Hastings & the relationship of history, new technologies, memory & dreams, triggered by vintage postcards. Download the free app https://apple.co/2wZohgP
Bio : Luciana is a researcher, artist & visiting lecturer for Brighton University Digital Media Arts MA and an honorary fellow in the Department of Psychology for Greenwich University. Working in a variety of contexts involving visualisations and interactive environments engaging in feedback loops using digital technologies. Her work explores consciousness and the results are expressed through digital media, performance, sound & drawing. Crossing boundaries between new technology, creativity and research – with dreams, the brain and the unconscious being recurring inspirations.
Apparitions 