Read the full article by Russell Nichols at Sacramento News & Review
Ten years ago, Broadway revealed a never-before-seen side of itself.
Quirky murals moved on restaurant windows. A massive turntable spun outside Dimple Records. Animals popped up at a child’s gravesite. For a brief stretch, with the support of augmented reality, Sacramento’s corridor for commerce had been transformed into a public, interactive canvas.
“Broadway Augmented” ran for nearly two months in the fall of 2014. With a custom smartphone app, viewers could walk from Pancake Circus to the Old City Cemetery, where 11 artists created 16 site-specific virtual works using AR (which superimposes computer-generated images onto the real world).
The artists visited the street, engaged with the community and researched its history before choosing a site to respond to with their work, says Rachel Clarke, professor of new media art and animation and current chair of the Art Department at Sacramento State. “In participating,” she adds, “the public were engaging with landmarks, with the cultural heritage of the street, unique architectural features, iconic local business and social history that they may have forgotten or never noticed or known about before.”