Augmented Reality commission for Inscription Journal Issue 5, Containers
Inside Of – points of contact
A thing that contains and is contained, 'Inside of' is an ever revealing transition between these states. It starts with the simple sphere, a celestial entity, containing the abstract and axiomatic platonic solids – simple geometric forms with metaphysical and practical purpose.
Augmented reality artwork for Inscription, the journal of material text – theory, practice, history.
The artwork is triggered by the journal cover, a photograph of Kimsooja's artwork 'Bottari 1999-2019', a shipping container painted in white, blue, red, yellow and black stripes in front of Cathédrale Saint Pierre in Poitiers, France.
Inscription, issue 5 and 'Inside Of' were launched at Senate House, London on 14th May 2025.
How we made this
The software is browser based which means it can be linked to with a simple QR code. There is no app to download and can be immediately viewed in a mobile browser.
The two key open-source software libraries we used are:
1. MindAR.j https://github.com/hiukim/mind-ar-js – this is the augmented reality component that allows the phone camera to detect the presence of Kimsooja’s image and then create an anchor on which the content can be attached
2. Three.js https://threejs.org/ – a framework for 3 dimensional visualisation
The animated transitions are all made in code and generated automatically. The sequence of objects, numbers of objects and colours are all determined randomly and in realtime.
Making sure the objects are perfectly inscribed in the enclosing sphere was the more complex aspect of the project. The algorithm for the transition from object in sphere to sphere inside object had to be carefully designed.
Artificial intelligence was used to help develop the code but the AI was not able to design this algorithm. This required pen and paper and a clear logical breakdown of the process required.