Simone Eisler's Future Nature

‍Simone Eisler was an artist that exhibited in the 2021 Floating Land outdoor art exhibition in Noosa. Simone created a number of sculptures that explored, across human, animal and plant worlds, concepts of physical transformation, species evolution and adaption and the imminent threat imposed by climate change. Simone wanted to add an additional element to the visitor experience, by implementing some form of immersion via augmented reality (AR).

The site of the exhibition was to take place somewhere along the Noosa Boardwalk (Queensland, Australia). This is a beautiful location, however posed some technical challenges. So we had to choose a location wisely. Working with Simone, we determine what were the most important elements to communicate to visitors.

Simone already had defined objectives for the experience, as it would be attached to her physical work in the outdoor exhibition. We helped her refine her goals and how she wanted the overall experience to look and feel. We helped find a suitable location and then performed a site analysis and determined how people would flow through the site and how the experience would look and feel in the space. Being outdoors it was particularly important to understand user behaviour as there are less constraints and assistance available than in an indoor curated space with staff.

We went through a process of breaking down the digital and physical aspects of the experience. Working with a 3D artist and the site artist to create the look and feel of the 3D environment. We also took the early moulds the artist created of her sculptures, scanned them in and used them as a base for virtual models to appear in the scene.

An early prototype was developed using Protopie. This was the only prototyping software that I could find that allowed me to test a rich interaction with sound. Clicking on the image below takes you to the Protopie prototype.