• Timeframe: 11 Weeks
• Roles: 3D Modeling, Augmented Reality Design, Virtual Reality Design, Art Direction, Visual Design
• Skills: Photoshop, Unity 3D, Rhino 3D, Augment, Illustrator, InDesign
• Collaborator: Dan Fried

John Heartfield was a Dadaist artist who used photomontage as a form of dissent and protest during the rise of the third reich. Most of his work until recently has been lost to history, and considering the current political climate, it seemed like an appropriate time to bring his work back into public view, and to experiment with current technologies to show how he created his work in a 3D space. 

We started with designing the exhibit itself, making renderings of the 3D space and site plans with all the dimensions needed for installation. After the exhibit was designed, Heartfield's work was taken into Photoshop and broken up into the layers we imagined he worked in during the examination of his work. These layers were brought forward and positioned in Z space to create a 3D model of his layered 2D pieces. 

To create the Augmented Reality portion, the art was then brought into Rhino 3D to create models that could be read by the Augment app, and then assigned "trackers" that could be scanned by devices with the app installed. 

To create the Virtual Reality exhibit, a model of the physical space the exhibit was planned for was created in Rhino in exact scale, and the AR models were imported and placed around the exhibit where they would be viewed next to their trackers. The exhibit was imported into Unity, and scripts were used for the HTC Vive to wire up transporting and interactivity. The result was a very effective virtual walkthrough of the planned exhibit. The video below is a recording of myself in the Vive headset, experiencing the VR walkthrough.