Argumentative Reality (installtion video)
AR
Duration: 00:00:55 (loop)
2019–2025
This augmented reality experience is designed as a game that utilizes the Apple store app called AR Van and a printed paper marker to lock the animation to a flat surface.
Download and then print marker and instructions
Argumentative Reality (AR) is part of the more extensive series of works called Incited. It expands my ongoing exploration of the human body within the fraught contexts of conflict, migration, and global surveillance. As personal identity and privacy dissolve under the weight of ever-expanding governmental oversight, the project challenges the growing desensitization of contemporary audiences. By merging real-world events with emerging technologies and artistic intervention, AR reconfigures historical trauma into an immersive reenactment, forcing viewers to confront the lived realities of those caught in geopolitical crises. As an illegal immigrant, one is always in a state of “in-between”—pushed out, pulled in, yet never fully belonging. This liminality inspires the project’s title, Incited, which begins with a real tragedy: a vehicular accident near Leskovac, Serbia, on February 24, 2015. In the early hours of that morning, a cargo van carrying 54 undocumented migrants from Algeria, Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, Kashmir, Nigeria, and Syria crashed, resulting in the deaths of all passengers. Using augmented reality as a primary medium for reenactment, AR unfolds through two distinct yet interconnected perspectives. The first is a video recreation of the accident presented from a detached, bird' s-eye view, mirroring how media outlets often depict migration tragedies—flattened into statistics and animated reconstructions. This augmented reality simulation allows viewers to interact with the event at a distance, zooming in and out, shifting angles, and examining the van as a mere object within a calculated narrative. Yet, as the audience engages with the augmented reality interface, the cold exterior of the van begins to fracture. A new perspective emerges—an X-ray-like visualization revealing the human bodies inside, exposing the tightly packed passengers whose presence is otherwise erased from dominant narratives. This scan-like aesthetic is not merely an artistic interpretation but draws from actual imaging technologies used in border surveillance and forensic investigations. An ordinary table, typically a place of gathering and stability, transforms into an interactive stage, making the invisible visible. A treadmill effect simulates movement, evoking both forced migration and the relentless push and pull of borders. The experience is heightened through cinematic special effects and an immersive soundscape, amplifying the tension between detachment and intimacy, spectacle and reality. By positioning the viewer within this layered reality—at once observer, witness, and implicated participant—AR subverts passive consumption and demands engagement. It invites reflection on how technology mediates our understanding of human suffering, interrogating the ethics of surveillance, spectacle, and empathy in the digital age.
