Encounter · Version one
MOCA London’s first augmented-reality exhibition. An empty gallery, a QR code, and a life-scale car crash suspended in the air.
The exhibition
Visitors entered what appeared to be an empty gallery—nothing but a QR code on the wall. Scanning it downloaded the Hoverlay app, and the room transformed: a life-size car crash, suspended in real time above their heads. Walking around and through it, they could see the two cars and their drivers, shot through the windscreens and caught in an embrace above the twisted metal.
The work was geolocated to the MOCA Project Space in London, so it could only be seen there. One car appeared to have crashed through the front window of the gallery; from the street outside, its rear end protruded onto the pavement. Reflective spheres and animated shards of glass turned through the air, and the brutal sound of a real crash filled the room.
“At first the space looks empty, but through their phones visitors are mesmerised by the explosive crash—capturing both the force of it, and the embrace frozen in the same moment.”
MOCA London
How it was made
Van Eyssen began with a series of 3D scans of cars that had been in real accidents, gathered from body shops across Los Angeles, then digitally stitched them together. He scanned two professional models, dressed in suits, against green screen in his studio, and added them to the scene—the tragic drivers, caught in an embrace above the wreck.
Reflective spheres and animated shards of glass were added to the digital sculpture, which runs over 26 feet long, and finally the sound of a real car crash. The result is a work that shadows reality at a scale and complexity rarely seen in AR—easy to mistake, walking the empty gallery, for the aftermath of a genuine collision.
“Most visitors will be confounded by the experience. They might have seen a VR or AR work before, but nothing on this scale, complexity or ability to shadow reality.”
Dr. Michael Petry — catalogue essay
Exhibition
Catalogue
The exhibition was accompanied by a printed catalogue with an essay by Dr. Michael Petry, Director of MOCA London. It traces how the work was built—from scans of crashed cars in Los Angeles body shops, to two models scanned in suits against green screen, to the reflective spheres, shards and crash sound—and the series of large 2.5D prints, Figures In Flight (And Falling), drawn from the wireframe beneath the sculpture.
The catalogue itself carries a QR code that summons a scaled-down model of Encounter in augmented reality—the whole sculpture, brought to the page.
Download the catalogue — PDF ↓
David Van Eyssen — Encounter · MOCA London, 2024 · ISBN 978-1-912800-17-9 · Book design EKCO Projects
