Experience William Blake in Augmented Reality

Imagine stepping inside the mind of one of your favorite artists: seeing through their eyes, hearing their thought process, and experiencing their dreams, nightmares, and everything in between.

This is the challenge we posed to Australian artists and technologists Tin Nguyen and Edward Cutting, known as Tin&Ed, in preparation for the Getty exhibition William Blake: Visionary.

Commissioned to create a contemporary response to the work of the radical 19th-century artist and poet, the pair looked to augmented reality (AR) to immerse visitors in an otherworldly realm filled with Blake’s uncanny creatures and obsessions—particularly the struggle between good and evil.

Tin&Ed dove into Blake’s drawings and paintings, consulting with Getty drawings curators Edina Adam and Julian Brooks about the artist’s materials and intentions. Then the pair began digitally sculpting versions of Blake’s creatures with Zbrush and Nomad3d. The final step was to animate them. Tin&Ed worked with a choreographer and motion capture technology to animate the creatures in the game engine Unity and ARKit.

The project, titled United Visions and available as a free app, debuted last summer at Apple’s new flagship store on London’s famed Brompton Road. (Blake’s native city was a fitting setting to bring his creations to life.)

Using the app, hybrid creatures from Blake’s drawing The Ghost of a Flea appeared in frightening multitudes on walls, tables, and even the ceiling. Serpents from his Satan Exulting over Eve slithered across the store with lifelike detail.

As part of the store’s opening events in July, Nguyen, Cutting, and Grammy-nominated hip-hop producer Just Blaze (who created the atmospheric soundscape for United Visions) participated in a series of panels and discussions highlighting their creative processes and the potential for experimenting with cutting-edge technology in museums.

The artists also emphasized that, with some training and basic equipment, anyone can explore AR. Tin&Ed expanded their knowledge of the software they used like the rest of us would, on YouTube, and poet Oveous Maximus recorded his vocal overlay with a MacBook and microphone while sitting on a beach.