IRL - AR Terada

IRL (“In Real Life”) is an augmented reality sculpture exhibit exclusively in the Yumebau App that aims to explore the themes of permanence and perception through a series of “bronze” sculptures by the Japanese artist Katsuya Terada. IRL is one of many acronyms that has appeared since the rise of smartphones, social media, and chat. Buddhism teaches that all the constituent forms (sankharas) that make up the universe are transient and therefore without concrete identity. What is “real” and what is “concrete” in the digitally saturated world that we live in today? Seen through the lens of Buddhist philosophy, IRL asks the viewer/participant to think about the role our own minds play in constructing our own individual “realities”. IRL is the result of an artistic collaboration between Terada and Yumebau Inc. who developed this AR exhibit based on Terada’s sculptural experiments. The 12 raw digital sculptures presented here are the results of the artist’s experiments with virtual 3D sculpting software between 2016-2017.