Luna Lopez | Que Es Un Chicano?: Using New Media Art to preserve a heritage created through a porous borderland.

This is an augmented reality enhance cultural heritage sculpture exploring the identity and culture of Chicanos.
 

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A digitally painted mural featuring some key elements of Chicano culture.

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An uneven and multiplied reflection created from many pieces of mirror.

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A close-up view of how the cultural elements look when separated by distance.

 
 
 

 
On February 2nd, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo moved the Mexican border southwest over 525,000 square miles. Without a choice in the matter, these Mexicans became American citizens despite never leaving their ancestral home. Since the creation of the first Chicanos, successive waves of immigration have led to a continual reframing of what it means to be both American and of Mexican descent. Chicanos live in a perpetual state of turmoil as they try to assimilate the values and practices of two conflicting cultures. This project aims to express the inability to define Chicanos using a static definition.
I have created an interactive sculpture that encourages users to learn about this culture while understanding its complexity. Like the pieces of a broken mirror from afar or an angle, users see a seemingly scattered array of Mexican cultural items. However, closer inspection reveals objects/practices descended from Mexico, inspired and reimagined in the United States, or imagine an ideally perfect balance between the two cultures. Working on this piece, I have naturally come to wonder how culture is mixing across other borderlands. What does this look like between two countries with very similar histories and cultures? How do cultures mix across other types of borders such as within a country itself? Similar to my project’s insistence that there is no one depiction of a Chicano, how do you define people in a world with increasingly more immigration? t what point is a culture something unique as opposed to simply two identities working in tandem? While this project does not and can not answer any of these questions, it leaves it to the audience to ponder what a future society may look like. Will borderlands and their cultures cease to exist after human culture has dissolved into one uniform existence? Or will increasing populations with unlimited potential for international communication lead to even more cultural identifiers? Either way, it is important to preserve these experiences to inform future generations.

 


Tags:#CulturalHeritage#AugmentedReality