KPU instructor’s art enters the third dimension

New technology means new styles at the SAG

A new style of art is going on display at the Surrey Art Gallery.

Paulo Majano, instructor of Digital Media at Kwantlen, has been working on this new style. It includes a lot of preemptive work, but it yields unique results.

If you were to study the works in the gallery, you may not notice anything special right away—all you’d see is a photograph. However, if you were to look at it through a special app on your mobile phone you would enter a 3D world, almost able to walk inside the photograph itself.

“You are able to move around it so you can see as if you’re looking through a window,” explains Majano. “You are able to see, for example, behind something. You can move it closer or farther back so you can see elements that are not present in the original image.”

Majano makes use of an app called Aurasma. He uploads the pictures to a website, and the app recognizes the pattern of the image. It then overlays the 3D content on the screen.

“People can just download the app, press on the little scanning button, and then hold [their phone] up to the picture,” he says. “It’s basically rendering 3D content on the fly.”

In order to create these works, Majano uses a software which renders a bunch of images together.

“You can take photographs of an object or of a person, maybe around 70 images, moving around the object, and then the software will create a 3D model of that,” he says, noting also that the subject has to be quite still when the photo is being taken, or else the software can’t work properly.

Majano will be giving a talk at the Surrey Art Gallery on May 14. He will be speaking about the process of making this type of art, ideas behind using this technology, and highlighting different ways of storytelling or capturing something.

One of the things that’s really important to Majano is the relevance to the area.

“It’s really important that it’s tied to the location,” he says. “It’s a way of letting people be able to see more than just a two-dimensional photo, being able to see the entire scene. So, capturing the location, that particular place and the actual objects that were there.”

Majano explains that part of the title of each of his works is also the geolocation of the area the pictures come from.

“It really ties it to a specific place,” says Majano.

The exhibit itself will run from April 9 to June 12 in the Surrey Art Gallery.