Suspended Spring

5 minute video recorded with my Suspended Spring augmented reality app, 2020.

Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP

The Nantesbuch Foundation focuses on artworks dealing with nature. In April 2020, they asked 100 of their artists to create a video piece on nature in the spring. (See their website for the online exhibit "Arts of Spring.")

To express my feeling of having to watch spring pass me by while isolated in my apartment, I created an augmented reality artwork by the same name, with a swirling cloud of cherry blossom petals. I then recorded this video in my apartment with the AR app during the April 2020 COVID lockdown.

In my video I wanted to express the feeling I had of being in a cocoon, watching spring swirl around me without really being able to participate in it - and wondering if the beautiful swirls of petals in the air carry the coronavirus as well? Small rituals become important: The trip to the balcony to see what spring is doing in the back yard. Pouring tea, and the hopeful light in the refrigerator, promising the excitement of the day: dinner! And then back to work at the PC, where it seems all my desktop images are of beautiful scenes from faraway places, and wondering if I will ever be able to travel again.

To create the music, I stretched out the traditional Japanese folk melody "Sakura" ("Cherry Blossoms") to produce music reminiscent of the ancient and sacred Gagaku court music of Japan.