Tobias graduate Andrea du Plessis has been selected as the winner of a prestigious art award in South Africa.
The Sasol NewSignatures Competition is a premier national competition for emerging artists exploring artworks that interface traditional art making techniques and AR technology discovering multisensory ways in which art will be experienced. Andrea’s winning piece is called “Paloceae Lupantozoa”.
She tells us, “Paloceae Lupantozoa” is the second artwork in a series called “Supernature”, and is inspired by 19th Century artist, Martin Johnson Heade’s (1819 – 1904) series of works, “Orchids and Hummingbirds”. The final video artwork consists of a combination of a traditional oil painting and an A.I. generated animated sequence – creating a link between past and contemporary representations of nature. The painting is made interactive with the use of an augmented reality (AR) app which can be downloaded for free (on iStore or Playstore). When you open the app on your phone and hold it in front of the painting, the animated version of the painting starts to play on the phone, bringing the painting to life.
Andrea goes on to say ‘The pandemic triggered within me a deep questioning of how we relate to our environment as a species and also encouraged society to spend more time in a digital space. The work is therefore inspired by our complex relationship with nature and technology.’
Congratulations Andrea, from all of us at Tobias.
The artwork can be seen on Andrea’s website https://andreadp.co.za
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