This immersive installation invites viewers into a quiet, contemplative space to engage with projected images and objects and reflect on their own intimate aspirations -- whether material or immaterial, of wealth, success, status, or comfort -- and the ways in which they are made both tangible (via material objects) and intangible (always out of reach) by the consumption of imagery that reinforces them.

The projected images incorporate the sleek, perfected visual language of commercial and still-life photography, stock imagery, and 3D software-generated imagery to portray mundane, imperfect, sometimes absurd moments in domestic spaces. Subtle elements of motion within the images, and the somewhat blurry nature of the projections, lend them a ghostly character.

Each projected image is accompanied by a “hologram” (created via the Pepper’s Ghost technique) of an object from within the photograph engaged in a bell jar, which tempts the viewer to touch the projection, yet remains impossible to grasp. Proximity sensors near each bell jar would trigger the holograms to disappear when the viewer reaches toward it.

This is an ongoing project pursued in my first-year Major Studio course in the MFA Design & Technology program at Parsons.

Here is an example of a moving photograph that would be projected, along with a prototype of its accompanying 
hologram.

I’m intrigued by the use of stock photos to suggest--and sell--ideas of family and intimacy to consumers, especially coupled with the conspicous consumerization of race and diversity.

I 3D scanned the lucky cat figurine and animated it in Blender.

I was inspired by Twitter user @ellingson to use a bell jar for the Pepper’s Ghost illusion, making the projected objects feel all the more precious.