AKASHA

Role: Design & Animation Year: 2019

AKASHA is a Pepper’s Ghost projection-mapping piece about humanity’s ego and attachment to the material world. From birth we keep taking; we chase status and things we don’t need. The piece asks for a slower, more examined look at life, stripped to its essence.

Concept

Drawing on samsara, the Buddhist cycle of suffering and dissatisfaction, AKASHA stages a parade of materiality: greed and aggression rendered through iconography borrowed from rituals, tribes, religions and cults. Viewers travel through an inter-dimensional tunnel of sacred geometry, arabesques, fragmentation and abstraction.

It follows the Four Noble Truths: life is suffering, suffering has an origin, it can cease, and there is a path out of it. In the end, the piece is about letting go of the worldly and moving toward impermanence and enlightenment.

Process

With one industrial design class behind me and almost no woodworking experience, I MacGyvered a Pepper’s Ghost box, starting with a cardboard prototype and a sheet of glass to test the hologram effect before building the final piece.

Prototype & Construction

Hologram Tests

The Oculus

The box’s oculus went from vector design to laser-cut piece, then through Deep Dream to generate the visuals projected inside.

Credits

Design & Animation

Design & AnimationDesmond Du 😉

Special Thanks

TeachersDominique ElliottMichael BetancourtAustin ShawMinho ShinJohn ColetteKelly Carlton