Augmented reality making cities unreal, any object can make a symphony, and everything - *everything* - can be cake. Vids to shake your senses

Welcome to our occasional curation of audio-visuals that blow open the doors of perception. Because, if you can’t imagine alternatives, you might never get them…

Above is from Aeon, here’s the descriptor:

If you ever hopped on the Pokémon GO craze, you’ll have an inkling of how digital technology is increasingly capable of adding rich new slices to everyday life.

The public exhibition ‘Unreal City’, which ran from 8 December 2020 to 5 January 2021 on the River Thames in London – and is, until 9 February 2021, available for at-home viewing – similarly superimposed digital layers on to reality, but with an aim to transform the city into an immersive augmented reality (AR) art gallery.

An initiative from the AR app Acute Art and Dazed Media, the exhibition featured 36 digitalsculptures from artists around the globe, and was arranged as a riverside walking tour at a time when indoor museums had become mostly inaccessible due to COVID-19.

Featuring images of some of the sculptures and words from artists including Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saraceno, Cao Fei and KAWS, this trailer for the ‘Unreal City’ exhibition is an exciting glimpse into the potential for AR as it continues to transform cities in strange and surprising ways.

From Colossal:

Swiss sound artist Zimoun (previously) harnesses the power of quick, chaotic movements in his large-scale installations and kinetic sculptures. Each artwork is composed of simple materials like cardboard boxes, wooden dowels, and cotton balls, among other common objects. Zimoun assembles multiples of the same configuration—think teetering sticks and metal washers suspended on a wire—and motorizes one portion, causing them to rattle back and forth.

Because each component is made by hand, they have slight differences that prevent them from synchronizing, despite all the motors being connected to a single current. The frenzied movements contrast the calming, whirring sounds the artworks emit, which mimic raindrops or a repetitive drum. This juxtaposition is just one example of the many comparisons the artist draws: chaos vs. order, mass vs. individual, simplicity vs. complexity, and manufactured vs. organic.

From Creative Review:

If you need a reminder of just how weird this year has been, cast your mind back to July when a spate of videos of cakes masquerading as everyday objects managed to break the internet. Kicking off with a BuzzFeed Tasty compilation of everything from a Croc to a toilet roll being sliced open to reveal layers of delicious sponge, the ‘everything is cake’ trend swiftly went viral, and in turn was hailed as a symbol of our collective pandemic paralysis.

“I think it goes back to the age-old thing of magic, magicians and illusionists,” says cake artist Ben Cullen, who saw interest in his spectacular illusion cakes explode in response to the trend. “People love being tricked, and food illusions work particularly well because food is relatable to everybody, so it’s a widespread way of tricking people straight away.”

…While every commission is different, Cullen’s typical creative process starts with him studying a real-life version of his subject, or if that’s not possible gathering together as many visual references as he can. After baking the cake, he stacks it up into layers, carves it down into the right shape and layers it with the choice of filling. He then puts the finishing touches to the design, using tools such as an airbrush to paint it with various shades of food colouring.