Last month, Rhizome celebrated our annual benefit, honoring generative artists Lillian Schwartz, Rafael Rozendaal, Ix Shells, and our 20 years of partnership with the New Museum. We commissioned artist Damjanski to create a physical award that we could present to trailblazing, digital artists, and what we received was half of an award, activated by a digital counterpart.
It’s an Augmented Reality Trophy!
AR trophy for Ix Shells at the Rhizome Benefit, June 28 2023. Photo: Alexey Kim.
Aptly named “Celebration.obj”, Damanjaski considers the trophies an “IRL celebration of URL achievements.” While the AR award utilizes a trophy cup in its IRL design, the left half of the cup is missing 😵‼️. In order to access its left half, you must scan the QR code, conveniently located on the top surface of the cup.
However, the trophy just seems to break even more when you activate the QR code, which utilizes Spark AR to project a deconstructed, broken-image icon. Damjanski regards the trophy as “two imperfect pieces merging into a renewed wholeness.”
How do you honor digital artists at IRL celebrations? For Damjanski, the answer lies in a hybrid sculpture—both offline and online, broken and whole.
View more photos of the “IRL URL” trophy below:
Rafaël Rozendaal and Ix Shells pose with their AR trophies at the Rhizome Benefit, June 28 2023. Photo: Alexey Kim.
video demonstrating how the AR trophy works, courtesy of Damjanski.
About the Artist
Damjanski is an artist living in a browser. Concerned with themes of power, poetry and participation, he explores the concept of apps as artworks. The app Bye Bye Camera is the camera for the post-human era. Every picture people take automatically removes any person. The app Computer Goggles lets people capture the world like a machine sees it and the LongARcat app creates long cats in AR.