The Inspiration

Working in the city of Detroit it’s hard to miss the art and culture either on the buildings or amongst the people. Long after the economic downward spiral of the city in the second half of the last century (the 1900's) the culture remained. It was a time marked by the closing of factories and the loss of jobs, Detroit was reduced to a city with large patches of vacancies and unused real estate.

Looking at Detroit now it would be hard to imagine how empty the city of my childhood memories could get, outside of major sporting events or summer festivals of course. The summers would offer small pauses of the sleepy town moniker of Detroit. In those instances, the city would blossom back to life. There were street and art festivals, the streets were packed with vendors serving food and selling their goods, and of course music. Where many outsiders only saw Detroit as a blight-ridden city on its death knell, my memories of the city were etched be experiences of culture and creatives. Culture has been Detroit's mainstay for at least the last 40-50 years, more so than any romanticized memories of the auto industry past.

I would guess that is what inspired me on this path. As a creative with a deep respect for the Detroit hustle which my peers endure, a creative who straddles the balance between art and engineering, it only felt right that as I carve out a place for myself in this world I should create a platform to empower others. That is where I arrived at the idea of Muralens, a mechanism which can synergize urban areas and the creatives who live there.

Muralens will allow creatives to deploy dynamic and evolving content anywhere in the world where their work resides. It can empower stakeholders (citizens, government, NGO’s) to deliberately direct discovery of engaging experiences to people who traverse their streets. It is an approach to XR which I feel will serve to be more than a one-time experience or a gimmick and instead of a scalable solution for creatives and public art anywhere in the world.

What Does it Do?

Mapping

The app maps public art throughout an urban space. It provides a simple user experience around searching and learning about the creations that exist in the target city.

Geolocation Events

The app provides location-based event information. It is the ethos of the platform to direct people to creations and engage them in the culture and understanding surrounding the art. This way the user can engage in the community and understand what attributed to the creation of the art.

Experiences (Lenses)

The app provides Extended Reality (XR) experiences atop of the public art. This way the intent and voice of the creator can be extended beyond the static piece they created.

What it Will Do?

Curation

This feature will enable user based, or crowd-sourced, curation and guides around points of interests/art.

Contribution

The goal of this app is to scale, this feature will enable contributors from anywhere in the world to discover curate public arts anywhere.

Depth

As technology and the platforms evolve the depth of devices and experiences will grow with it.