A phosphene rifts | MULTI-SITE AR EXHIBITION

+ Curated by Hearth

July 11 – August 10, 2024
Dundas St W

We spend our days peering at the world mediated through our smartphone cameras, maps, reviews, stories. An annotated globe. Our souls receive and hold images, before they are blended together and put to work in the mind. Virtual reality is seductively aspirational. It introduces a screen culture, and it obscures its own relationship with the material infrastructure it relies on: a superimposed spectacle still entirely physical and abiding by that logic albeit somewhere else. What is this VR’s refraction index? Does it dampen the sun like our eyelids do when making us chase patterns across their inner surface?

Exploring augmented reality’s ability to expand upon physical perceptions of the real world with objects and assets only perceivable through a digital medium, A phosphene rifts explores the mutant materiality and particular tangibilities in the spontaneous creation unique to AR. Rather than bridging, could probing the gap between the corporeal world and the ‘virtual’ allow the botanic and animal to tap into a zone outside of linear spacetime? There are rifts to be deepend in what we make of the ‘real’ world, where moments of curiosity, grief, survival, and healing suddenly emerge. Here, the light of these phenomena is interpreted through the lenses of our trusty smartphones before entering our eyes.

Charge your phones and join Hearth and artists Megan Feheley, Soft Turns, Lauren Warrington, Hiba Ali, and Tristan Sauer to explore a collection of AR artworks supported by Artivive.

Presented with the support of the Little Portugal Toronto BIA.

This project has been funded by the City of Toronto’s Main Street Innovation Fund, as part of Government of Canada support through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario).

FEATURING

Megan Feheley
Soft Turns
Lauren Warrington
Hiba Ali
Tristan Sauer