Daniel Leighton Art + AR vs weird cuts

Daniel Leighton is a contemporary fine artist who merged his painting, filmmaking, storytelling and technology backgrounds by incorporating augmented reality into his iPad paintings.  Daniel’s work has been featured by Timothy Potts, Director of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Bryan Barcena Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Nicholas Barlow, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where he recently spoke, the LA Center for Digital Art (LACDA), Technarte, the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) and more. Having Crohn’s Disease since birth, Leighton faced his mortality from a very young age. Countless invasive procedures, hospitalizations and surgeries helped drive him to dive deep into a lifelong quest to understand the workings of his body and his emotions. He creates emotional portraits with simple lines and brilliant colors to capture complex states of the human psyche, while exploring the possibilities of technology and human emotion being harnessed for the greater good. When viewed through this app, Daniel Leighton Art+AR, his paintings come to life as a narrative accompanying the painting; using animation, film and particle systems to further capture a feeling and story. One example is the painting "On Trial" where anger is evident in the faces and pointing fingers of the characters and the moon looking down at the scene has a single tear. When viewed through Leighton's augmented reality app, the painting catches fire and the only way to put out the fire is to tap on the moon which begins to cry therefore putting out the flames with the tears. This piece is about anger in the form of blame and judgment, and shows how when feelings are expressed, anger subsides. Another example is a painting called "A Substance Called Understanding." Through the augmented reality and interactivity (tapping) the room fills up with hearts and the sound of many, layered voices saying "I love you". Leighton has a total of 11 paintings which incorporate augmented reality. If you like this app, please leave us a review or rating as it will help us get more people to see it. Also, please share it with your friends. Thank you!

Weird Cuts is created by Zach Lieberman and Molmol Kuo, with the support of Google Arts & Culture. The app allows you to cut and remix through photography and explore the poetics of AR. The app consists of two modes, cutout mode, and collage mode. In cutout mode, users are encouraged to walk around and collect a wide range of different materials via photographs which are cut into shapes. In collage mode, users can assemble and arrange their cutouts in 3d space by moving and tapping the screen. A user may also make adjustments of the shapes while holding down their finger and moving it up, down, left or right to rotate and scale. The output is a multi-dimensional work made from combinations of collected and found objects and spacial improvisation. The inspirations come largely from artists such as Hannah Hoch, David Hockney, Gego (Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt), Ruth Asawa, Jean Arp, to name a few.