SCARS OF DEMOCRACY

TitleSCARS OF DEMOCRACY
BrandSTROKE ART FAIR
Product/ServiceSCARS OF DEMOCRACY APP
Category C01. Digital & Interactive Design
Entrant SERVICEPLAN GERMANY Munich, GERMANY
Idea Creation SERVICEPLAN GERMANY Munich, GERMANY
PR PLAN.NET Munich, GERMANY
Production PLAN.NET Munich, GERMANY
Production 2 FIELD OF VIEW MEDIA Feldafing, GERMANY
Additional Company CAPO'S FINEST Munich, GERMANY
Credits
Name Company Position
Alexander Schill SERVICEPLAN GERMANY Global Chief Creative Officer
Carsten Popp PLAN.NET Creative Concept
Maximilian Schöngen SERVICEPLAN GERMANY Global Creative Strategist
Markus Maczey PLAN.NET Executive Creative Director
Michael Sundermann PLAN.NET Creative Director
Vanessa Holz PLAN.NET Junior Art Director
Isabella Graß PLAN.NET Junior Art Director
Gareth Watson PLAN.NET Senior Editor Content
Jonas Heitzer PLAN.NET Creative Coder
Efim Tamplon PLAN.NET Junior Creative Coder

Background

The "right to exercise artistic freedom" under Article 19 of the UN Convention for Human Rights is increasingly under threat worldwide. As one of Europe's most important urban art fairs STROKE Art Fair chose to celebrate this internationally ratified human right with a special exhibition of "Scars of Democracy" – a series of political portraits by Munich-based street artist “capo's finest”. The series includes paintings of Obama, Erdogan, Merkel and more, their bodies adorned with tattoos that represent decisions, unfinished business and the things they tried to keep from the public eye. For the first time, street art was transformed into a virtual vernissage: digitally deciphered in an Augmented Reality-App where users could reveal the truth behind each tattoo.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

This project was about bringing the physical and virtual worlds together and engaging users in the fight for artistic freedom. During the STROKE Art Fair exhibition, huge canvases depicting each political portrait hung from the ceilings for attendees to view – but the true depth of the experience and message was only possible with digital augmentation. We developed the SCARS AR app to allow users to interact with the portraits on a whole new level. Visitors at the art fair could hold their smartphones in front of the tattoos to scan them and see the story (thoroughly researched video snippets) behind the tattoo. For those not visiting the art fair, the app’s “Couch Mode” enabled users to immerse themselves in this murky world of politics from the comfort of their own home: users virtually place the protagonists onto their home walls and discover the stories behind each tattoo.

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

With the SCARS AR app you can interact with the portraits in two ways: The app allows you to scan the tattoos on the artist's artwork. By pressing on the scan you get the story behind the motif. The second experience was made possible thanks to Apple’s top notch ARKit 2.0. Visual Inertial Odometry tracks the world around the user’s device and transforms the data into a virtual object. No physical artworks required! In order to allow an easy handling of the app, the functionalities were placed in the bottom bar. It allows a fast handling for scanning tattoos or selecting artworks. The operation of the individual motifs was natively adapted to the finger movements of the users. We engaged users on social media via Instagram where we hijacked the well-known user interface by posting a series of individual images which over time revealed a full Scars of Democracy wallpaper.

List the results (20% of vote)

More than 8000 visitors got actively involved in the AR-exhibition with hundreds of (free) App Downloads in just 48 hours as well as a broad international social media response (1927 Instagram followers).