Altered Perceptions

While an undergraduate Computer Science student at Carnegie Mellon University, Andy Kong developed a pass-through AR system that overlays different filters in real-time. Inspired by how spatial familiarity translates to visual homogenization, Kong’s project “Altered Perceptions” provides an instantaneous change of perspective for the community of scholars and artists at CMU.

Kong wrote,

“People at my school are always complaining about how boring campus/Pittsburgh/real life looks. “Wean is too brutalist and all concrete” and “Gates smells like coffee and looks ugly.” I think the real problem is that we get so used to the things we see every day that we stop really seeing them; that is to say, the beauty of the world is hidden in plain sight.

Kong was inspired to change the way we see things, to edit the way objects appear to us so we can see them as novel. Altered Perceptions operates on our eyes and alter their colors, shapes, and details to take a refreshed aim at their surroundings.

This project was made possible with support of microgrant# 2020-022 from the Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art @ the Frontier. Additional images can be found here.