Artist Felipe Pantone turns the world’s streets into his AR canvas

Grand Palais Immersif’s current exhibition Loading: Urban Art in the Digital Age is an immersive exhibition that traces the history of urban art and sheds light on the impact of digital technologies on the work of street artists. With Google Arts & Culture, we bring this beyond the gallery walls through digital storytelling and a new augmented reality artwork by multimedia artist Felipe Pantone.

Pantone began doing graffiti as a teenager, which influenced his style and approach to art. In his work, he uses bold colors and geometrical patterns to create visually striking and dynamic compositions. He’s interested in objects that can be physically manipulated so they respond to the environment they are placed in and the way the viewers manipulate them.

In collaboration with Google Arts & Culture and Acute Art, Felipe Pantone was interested in using the latest augmented reality technologies from Google to explore how unique urban environments around the world impact his bold, visually striking geometric designs. The result is Data Chromesthesia, Pantone’s first artwork in augmented reality.

It leverages Google's Geospatial Creator to turn streets around the world into a living canvas, overlaying designs directly onto buildings and inviting you to experience the art all around you. Pantone’s art augments the urban landscape, utilizing ARCore Scene Semantics API to understand the environment and recognise and colorize the buildings, streets and sidewalks, while excluding cars, people or trees. Data Chromesthesia dynamically reacts in real time to the local air quality, using live data from Google Maps Platform’s Air Quality API: if the air quality around you is good, Pantone’s artwork will display bright vivid colors — but these will fade to black and white if the air quality drops, engaging us with our environment in a new visceral way.

We invite everyone to learn more about the making of this artwork on Google Arts & Culture and to experience it firsthand via the Acute Art app: simply step out on the streets and use the Acute Art App to project Felipe Pantone’s augmented reality artwork around you.

The artwork is visible in streets around the world, and if you’re lucky to be physically present in front of the Grand Palais Immersif, you’ll have the opportunity to admire the custom local artwork that’s only available here. Step inside the Grand Palais Immersif, and you’ll be able to experience more of Felipe Pantone work exhibited as part of the exhibition Loading, on show until July 15, 2024; alongside local artists such as Bilel Allem or Seb Toussaint, and an archive of murals from all around the world captured in Street View by Google Arts & Culture as part of their Street Art collection.