atelierJJX was founded by a multi-disciplinary female creator. Her career in architecture, working on international award-winning buildings, and her personal work in photography & video, are the basis for her creative practice. She is a perpetual experimenter, always interested in pushing the limits of innovative technologies such as digital 3D modeling, scripting, augmented reality & 3D printing. Her current body of work focuses on creating sculptural spaces and objects that illuminate one’s perception about themselves and their environment.
Check out our conversation with her below to learn more about her latest piece, Unbound Indigo.
Tell us a little about the work you’re presenting with Ghosting:
I create spatial sculptures that are intended to be appreciated from the outside as objects as well as experiential walk-throughs from the inside.
Unbound Indigo is a digital sculptural spatial object which invites users to experience it in multi-faceted ways. The perception of the sculpture’s porosity and colour fluctuates through movement. Depending on its orientation, when scaled large enough, the sculpture becomes a spatial construct to be explored, revealing its form and the context beyond.
For Ghosting, I knew the sculpture would be located in Los Angeles so a vibrant vibe was desirable. The sculpture also appears and disappears as one moves around it which speaks to the ephemerality of every moment in the city. Everything is rapidly ever-changing in a place like LA.
How does translating your work into AR form speak to your practice?
I have a background in architecture and have worked on buildings with complex spaces that required robust structural systems to hold them in place. The beauty of augmented reality is that large and complex spatial constructs can be created without the limitations of gravity and materials that the real world imposes. My sculpture encourages users to walk through it and experience layers that transform their perception of space. It is virtual but the layer of reality that it is mapped on also grounds them to the earthly experience. The juxtaposition of the digital and real enhances the experience almost as a sort of superpower.
Explain how the cities you create influence your work
Cities possess contexts with histories, cultures and events that create the urban flavour of a place. I believe that by engaging with my sculptures, the experience of a place is filtered. The fluctuations between reality and the digital realm begin to feel surreal. Users start to notice the details of life around them because they are experiencing it in very focused moments every time they break out of the confines of the digital spatial construct.
How does blockchain technology support you as an artist?
The NFT community formed around the use of blockchain technology for art through smart contracts. It allowed for like-minded creators to gather globally and share the experience of this moment in time that NFT artists and collectors are developing.
Since the work is located on the blockchain, it is no longer confined to the walls of galleries or large institutions. Everyone can experience the art while the art gains value and earns the artist provenance because its record is stamped and transactions are recorded on-chain.
The biggest potential I see is being able to stay connected to those who collect my work. Given that the work is experiential, I am interested to see how my collectors use it, engage with it or transform the original intention of the work. It is possible to imagine that the experiences of the work are a collaboration between my intentions and the collector’s wishes and that has the potential to feed ideas to my future projects.
How does Illust’s platform/community support you as an artist?
This platform has allowed me to connect with artists and a team who have the same objective – to champion the enhanced benefits of augmented reality.