Majka (The Mother) is an augmented reality monument dedicated to unconditional love, installed forever in front of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade See the location on Google Maps. . It cannot be moved, removed, defaced, or altered in any way – she will always be there, watching over her child.
To view the monument in situ, you need a device which can perceive this virtual layer of reality. Luckily, you probably already have it in your pocket:
Loss/Permanence
Within a matter of months, I’ve both become a father and saw my own father wither away to a long-standing heart condition. I was witnessing my mother crumbling before this loss, while my wife was dealing with the pain and joy of becoming a mother herself. Seeing this transformation first-hand, I’ve come to realize how unrelenting a mother’s attention to her child is, but also how many different faces she will be forced to wear over the course of her life.
The core of this project is based around the concept of a mother’s presence, but there was another strange phenomenon which I wanted to utilize – I call it object permanence.
While experimenting with large-scale augmented reality pieces, I’ve noticed two very distinct sensations which occur after prolonged exposure to augmented reality content through a small screen. One was that the apparent size of the world increased, since I was looking at a “smaller” version of it. But it was the second one that left a huge impression on me – there was an immense feeling of the augmented reality object still being there, invisible and huge, for a very brief moment before its presence was wiped from my memory.
What makes an object present? If a person is out of your sight, are they still there? What does it take for us to be aware of a presence? And thus, can we manufacture it? Can loss be visualised?
Majka is my attempt on answering those questions. I hope you will enjoy it.
Exhibition @SmartArt 2021
I was kindly invited by the organizers of the SmartArt conference to show Majka in a more intimate setting, in addition to it being (forever) available on-site. You can see some of the photos from the exhibition below.
