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Unseen Virtual

Revealing the Unseen: Perspectives Beyond the Screen

The perspective seen through the frame

“Unseen Virtual” is an interactive installation featuring a 3D-printed Chinese garden sculpture. At BioArt Laboratories, viewers' shifting perspectives reveal the sculpture’s imperfections, challenging digital perfection and exploring the boundary between digital and physical world.

Revealing Imperfections: The Art of LoD Optimization

The main component is a 3D-printed model of a traditional Chinese garden, partially detailed and partially unfinished, showing signs of polygonal stretching. A background video presents the sculpture from an ideal angle, fully completed. As viewers approach, sensors capture their real-time perspective, replacing the pre-set view on the video. This interaction magnifies the model's unfinished areas on the screen, highlighting them as results of Level of Detail (LoD) Optimization, not flaws.

Beyond the Frame: Challenging Perfection and Revealing Hidden Realities

Traditionally, on-screen content is perfected while off-screen parts are neglected. However, these overlooked parts are essential to the complete picture. By showcasing different states of the model, the installation challenges traditional aesthetics and perfectionism.

The interactive design enhances viewer engagement, prompting reflection on the compromises made when transferring the physical world to the virtual. By inviting viewers to "enter the screen," the work breaks the boundaries between the digital and physical, artificial and natural, immaterial and material. Changing perspectives make viewers aware that what they see on-screen is not the whole picture; much is hidden outside the frame.

Embracing Imperfection: Integrating Digital and Physical Realities

"Unseen Virtual" encourages viewers to realize that the digital world includes both perfect images and hidden, imperfect parts. By breaking the frame, the work fosters a deeper engagement with and understanding of the digital world, integrating it into our real world. Accepting imperfections in the real world helps us appreciate the digital extension of our physical reality.

About Yawen Cong

Yawen is a visionary designer in Phygital and Media Design, graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven. She explores integrating traditional aesthetics into contemporary phygital art using highly reflective and transparent materials to represent nature. Her work projects the physical world into the digital realm and reflects it back, blurring the boundaries between the two and creating a seamless fusion that challenges perceptions and redefines their relationship.

Strijp T+R area, BioArt Laboratories, Oirschotsedijk 14-10 , Map No. A1
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