In This House

I was invited to make a locative media design that would encourage audience interactions with the live performance of Buffalo-based artist Naila Ansari. The performance happened at Albright-Knox Art Museum‘s new art space in Northland and in the opening (Jan 17th, 2020) of an exhibition by NYC-based artist Heather Hart. The performance involved Heather’s work which was a life-size rooftop construction designed and installed in the space of Albright-Knox’s Northland.

In this piece, I wanted to bring the process of architecture’s construction to experience for the audience. The locative media and mobile technology effectively enforced the idea of place/space as a progressive construct and helped the audience play an active role in the art viewing process.

I designed four stories (videos) to be viewed in four spots around the corners of Heather Hart’s rooftop. The videos engaged themes such as insideness/outsideness with a focus on the relationship between body and building. Each story (a combination of digital video and text) was embedded in four QRcode labels, all printed and installed on four sign holders standing around Hart’s rooftop for the visitors’ access, similar to four pieces of a puzzle. The audience was invited to follow a cycle based on the signs; they were invited to scan each QRcode with their mobile phone’s camera to see Naila’s performance in the course of completion of the structure captured in the same spot.

mobile app interface
mobile app interface
Rooftops construction in progress

stills from four videos produced for mobile application
still from video#2