Step aboard a real ship and enter this fully immersive, fantasy-fiction world and explore an evolved reality brought about by climate change, rising sea levels and tropical climates.
Using augmented reality (AR), artist Anita Fontaine invites the viewer to suspend belief and encounter a kaleidoscopic world of psychedelic sculptures exploding from land and water.
Watch as the skyline playfully shapeshifts, revealing a surreal, alternate reality of our urban landscape. The Blue Violet River is an installation that is currently available for touring for presentation on passenger boats.
About the artist:
Anita Fontaine is an Australian speculative future artist who blurs the virtual and physical with a flexible tactility. Layering high tech with low art, her work spins fanciful new expressions within the grand Metaverse marked by a sense of punk and hyperrealism.
Her visionary perspective has materialised future labs, VR experiences and immersive installations, games and films, and led to collaborations with galleries, museums and select brand entities. Most recently she co-founded The Department of New Realities – a future-forward creative unit hell-bent on finding ways to connect humans with new tech art experiences.
She continues to alternate her technical approach like a chameleon for the new age. Concerned with expanding eco-anxiety she’s now focusing her inventiveness on untangling the collective hive mind. Through the synergies of art and innovation her hope is to positively influence the future’s landscape, benefiting the environment and reducing the suffering for all.
In 2019, Fontaine was voted one of Adweek’s most fascinating creatives and was one of 50 Creative Leaders to watch in 2018’s Creative Review. She has spoken at SXSW, OFFF, Nicer Tuesdays and FrameLab and been featured on Nowness, Dazed Digital and It’s Nice That.
Fontaine presented The Blue Violet River as part of AND Festival 2021. For more images from AND Festival 2021 see our Blue Violet River Flickr Album and head to our Youtube channel for videos and interviews
If you’d like to know more about touring opportunities for Blue Violet River, and to request a touring pack please contact our Senior Producer Lou Hargreaves on louise@andfestival.org.uk