AERIAL – An interactive exhibition in augmented reality for the Aethercircus Festival 2023. You can explore every experience and play with the characters, you can help build an airship or be a DJ. The exhibition was planned as a treasure hunt, with the QR codes placed at the most relevant festival locations.
They virtual objects are made for outdoors, they invite you to experience them from every angle to find all the possible interactions. And some will even take off into the sky!
This project was aimed at a festival audience: Families, people with little or no experience with AR, anyone who wanted to experience a "secret" virtual festival.
I also wanted to give the audience something to "take home" and play with later, a free souvenir from a great event.
I had actually planned AERIAL as a set of 2,5 D murals and sketched animated characters to interact with. However, checking out the festival location, we realized that all of the accessible walls would be covered by booths and event stages.
Testing the interactions with 3D dummy objects, 3D characters plus 2D animations turned out to be a better choice. I sculpted and animated the models in Blender 3D and painted the textures in Photoshop.
Programming the interactions was kind of tricky because Adobe Aero offers no "if - then" functionality one would expect in a game like experience.
Have fun with AERIAL yourself! You can start right here.
