Alexa Meade
Artist Alexa Meade transforms 3 dimensional objects into 2D with her paintbrush.
Meade is an American installation artist who is best known for her portraits painted directly onto the human body. Her painting style creates an optical illusion where her models appear flattened into 2D when photographed. Meade calls her work Reverse Trompe L’Oeil.
One of the things I find so intriguing about Meade’s work is it’s the *opposite* of the prevalent trend and current technological trajectory of creating 3D objects from flat 2D images (as we see with Augmented Reality and in this “Photo Wake-Up” demo created by the University of Washington and Facebook I shared on Instagram and Twitter):
Meade’s work truly crosses realities, particularly in her recent explorations as an Artist in Residence at Google working with the AR/VR team.
Meade collaborated with Google to digitally capture her latest installation as a rainbow-hued depth map. She then painted a reinterpretation of that pattern back onto the original scene. The AR/VR team recaptured the final work using their DeepView technology to eventually turn into an Augmented Reality experience.
Alexa Meade at Google
"It's quite meta," says Meade. "It's going from the physical 3D to the computational photography's interpretation of the 3D, painting that back onto reality, and then capturing it once more."
So many realities to love here! This work is extraordinarily XR Goes Pop. Can’t wait to see the AR version!
