For this project, we were tasked with creating a live sculpture using AR or VR. I chose to wrestle with Unity and Vuforia to produce an AR experience revolving around two of my favorite things in NYC natural spring flowers and convenience store flower stands.
As much as I don’t like using single plastic, there is something beautiful about the flowers wrapped in plastic and the plastic curtains draped in front of the stores. These dying plants are getting preserved as much as possible. I don’t know; I’ve always been drawn to them.
I wanted to use the idea of plastic wrap and preservation to “protect” the flowers blooming on the trees around Brooklyn. I also wanted to experiment with the flowers at the convenience store.
First, I set out to photograph the flowers.
Back home, I took these images and made collages in Photoshop. To complete the image I added a layer of “plastic” wrap final layout.
Next, I built my scene in Unity. The goal for the VR experience was to have dead flowers trigger the sculpture. Luckily I had dead flowers in my apartment. Once triggered, the screen would be filled with the sculpture. I wanted the user to have to rotate the phone and look around to experience the whole piece.
Problems faced:
- Getting the Unity build onto my phone. For some reason, every time I exported the build, it would make a folder, but the folder is empty.
- Lighting on one of the faces. The sculpture works, but the lighting on one of the planes is always dark. I was unable to figure out that problem.
- I thought the trigger would still be activated on the actual live flowers if it was lined up the same way as the image. That experiment failed.
In the future:
After I built this, I think it needs a sound element. I should record the ambient sound of the neighborhoods. I’d also like the trigger to be the actual dead flowers, not an image of them.