Eindhoven – Created by designer Audrey Large, the life.vfx project demonstrates a way of distorting physical objects through visual effects used in film-making.
Large argues that the ubiquity of screens and digital content is already creating a mixed reality, in which computer-generated images are superimposed onto physical environments. She suggests that by designing and editing physical objects as if they were part of the digital realm, we could create a more consistent experience of reality. ‘The awkwardness of our times is felt because we keep on designing objects and spaces as a way of navigating between two physical and digital worlds while we are experiencing them as one,’ she explains.
Large brings the idea to life through the Mocaps.vfx series of artefacts. Each object in the series started as an everyday product such as a fork or a vase, before being repeatedly distorted to reflect the gestures of its user. The movements were measured through motion capture and fed back into the software to transform the original shape. The project is a comment on the increasingly blurred nature of our reality and suggests that we can create unified design principles for the physical and the virtual worlds.