As we count down to the launch of our interactive, digital exhibition Felice Grodin: Invasive Species during Miami Art Week, local artist Felice Grodin sat down with PAMM Visitor Services Assistant Catherine Toruno to chat about the upcoming launch. We invite the public to experience art in the palm of their hands with cutting-edge technology as we leverage augmented reality (AR) technology for the first time.
The exhibition will virtually transform Grodin’s work through the PAMM App. This project is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
With a background in architecture, Grodin skillfully incorporated PAMM’s Herzog & de Meuron-designed building to showcase Mezzbug and Terrafish in the East Portico’s hanging gardens and the Padma and Raj Vattikuti Learning Theatre.
“The relationship of the artwork to PAMM is two-fold,” Grodin explains. “On one hand, the source material is based independently on some of my freehand drawings. Through digital conversion, I’m able to alter, scale, and three-dimensionally nest the drawings within the grounds of the building. For each artwork, there is both a site-specific aspect as well as a narrative that evolved out of conversations with curator Jen Inacio,” she says.
The series of augmented reality animations will all work with the museum’s architecture and will derive from Miami’s landscape. From landscape painting to Massive Attack’s 1998 album cover for Mezzanine, Grodin shares her inspirations.
“One of the first things that I thought about was the history of landscape painting in the United States. Specifically, Jen Inacio and I discussed the Hudson River School. The paintings at that time were reflective of emerging American themes concerning expansion and our relationship to the environment. The scenes were somewhat romantic and actually quite synthetic. They were also political,” says Grodin.
Thanks to Apple’s augmented reality ARKit platform and Cuseum, Grodin was able to animate her work into digital renderings on the PAMM App. Grodin explains her process to us.
“Translating from 2D hand drawing, to 2D digital drawing, to 3D digital drawing is just the beginning! I also incorporate any information about the architecture and surrounding landscape of PAMM into digital software. In the software, I’m able to scale everything to 1:1 so I can really examine the relationship between the artwork and the architecture. I like to then explore some basic properties such as color and texture of the artwork. From that point, I’m able to produce a digital model that can be exported to the AR software that Cuseum will be using,” she says.
About Felice Grodin (Miami)
Felice Grodin is an artist with a background in architecture. Her practice focuses on the speculative integration of art and design by developing strategies for modeling our present conditions and making meaningful imprints upon them. Through ArtCenter/South Florida and the Bureau for Cultural Strategies (BUX), she is currently participating in the fellowship The Recalibrated Institution, a laboratory for developing and testing intelligences that address emerging and long-term systemic challenges. In addition, she is a member of the collaborative A.S.T. (Alliance of the Southern Triangle), an initiative exploring how artistic and cultural possibilities can be reimagined in light of climate change and political volatility by leveraging the dynamics already in process. She has also contributed essays to various publications including The Miami Rail. She obtained her Bachelor of Architecture from Tulane University, where her thesis was a recipient of the Thomas J. Lupo Award for Metropolitan Studies, and her Master of Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University.