Gateway To Reality
Installation / Augmented Reality / Binaural audio, 2023.
In collaboration with Shaye Thiel and Sofia Economou.
Gateway to Reality invites individuals of all ages to delve into Aristotle’s philosophical framework of the five senses. Drawing inspiration from Aristotle’s seminal work, De Anima, composed between 384-322 B.C., our Augmented Reality experience unravels the interconnectedness of the senses and the four elemental forces: fire, air, water and earth. By challenging Aristotle’s ideas through hearing, taste, smell, touch, and sound, participants are invited to engage with a contemporary understanding of senses, reality and self-perception.
Wearing Snap’s unreleased AR-glasses, ‘Spectacles’, participants encounter four tactile containers, each representing an element. Augmented Reality blurs traditional notions of perception through sense hacking methods pioneered by Charles Spence.
Inspired by Aristotle’s Peripatetic School, renowned for its emphasis on movement and knowledge sharing, the portable nature of these containers encapsulates this ethos. Gateway to Reality encourages spatial engagement via movement due to a pivotal breakthrough in the late 1870’s with Robert Bárány’s discovery of the vestibular system, uncovering a sixth sense and further challenging Aristotle’s concept of five senses.
Through Augmented Reality and sense hacking methods, Gateway to Reality is a reintroduction to senses as they were once known.
In collaboration with Snap Inc. and the Royal College of Art.
Photos and video by Sung Hoon Song