Art Statement:

"I borrowed a painting of a solitary blue flower trapped in a window frame. It stirred thoughts of confinement and captivity. At the time I was actively following the women's rights protests in Iran. A Persian song, "Baraye" by Shervin Hajipour echoed dedicating your life to the greater good and eventually to freedom. Inspired, I created an interactive projection mapping program with the help of software called Touchdesigner and titled the altered artwork "Azadi", meaning "Freedom" in Persian, Hindi, and Urdu. The blue flower's petals burst out of the window frame, in response to sound produced by the audience. The louder the audience, the more petals erupt. This fusion of art and technology aimed to connect participants to the struggle for liberation. "Azadi" symbolizes the relentless pursuit of freedom, and associates it with raising one's voice for the good."

1. Digitally traced the petals of the flower in photoshop

2. Developed the first draft of the final projection constituted of Particle GPUs in TouchDesginer,

3. Broke the frame of the painting

4. Exhibited the work so far in Video & Compositing class with Prof. Nathan King. He has been directing and supporting me with this project.

I removed the paintings from the frames for better projection and started experimentation with audio-reactive visuals in Touchdesigner.

I ended up using ParticleGPU for the final visuals.

Both paintings speak to the idea of confinement, with the flowers being restricted and cropped by the frames. I decided to propose the idea of freedom. In the meanwhile, I was inclining towards generative and interactive art pieces. I discovered TouchDesigner.

Diane Relf, an artist based out of Christiansburg, VA, invited independent artists to collaborate on an altered art project to be exhibited in Spring 2023. I collected 2 paintings from her and decided to alter them digitally in the exhibition space with projection mapping.