Exhibition A is a smiling image that reacts to your emotions. Depending on the information from your brainwaves, the background music may also swell or soften. This is Raghava KK, a storyteller and multimedia artist, “Monalisa 2.0.”
Exhibition B is a painting of a cosmic scene with a blue structure emerging from red sand dunes and rising into a hazy sky. Until you watch it through an augmented reality app and witness a dynamic animation superimposed on the canvas in front of you, it isn’t finished, though. This is a piece from figurative painter Marina Fedorova’s “COSMODREAMS” project.
This type of artwork is known as “phygital” art, the most recent medium available to artists worldwide. It is a hybrid, inextricably linked fusion of the physical and digital worlds. And after the pandemic and the digital-NFT boom, space has accelerated more quickly than ever.
“It is a new phrase currently, it is only starting to be used,” explains Pablo Del Vaal, the digital curator of Art Dubai, the largest international art fair in the Middle East, where both Fedorova and Raghava KK had pieces on display in March of this year. There are numerous methods for bringing genuine things, such as paintings or sculptures, into the digital world. All of those things first function more on a technical level, but the fascinating thing is that thematically, they develop into something truly exceptional. For that reason, a lot of traditional artists make extensive use of digital activations.
It doesn’t matter if it’s producing NFTs, augmented reality, or sophisticated artificial intelligence and neurofeedback software developed in partnership with neuroscientists; this is the new creative space that is emerging at the nexus of the physical and digital worlds, and it is changing the way we think about art.
In 2007, Chris Weil, the current chairman and CEO of the Australian advertising firm Momentum, created the term “phygital.”
Since then, it has become a crucial component of our shopping and gaming experiences, like when you scan a QR code to see a connected digital experience born from a physical object, or when you enter a restaurant or store to browse menu options on a touchscreen kiosk, or, of course, when you play Pokémon Go! as she hurriedly searched the area for the greatest Pokemon.