Union Beneath the Certificate

This artwork explores the theme of Digital Decay through the contrast between a traditional colour pencil portrait and a digital animation. The married couple represents love, memories, identity and significant life moments preserved through physical art. As the digital animation begins to distort the portrait through glitches, pixelation, colour shifts and fragmentation, it symbolises how digital information and memories can become corrupted, altered or fragmented over time. The artwork also incorporates augmented reality (AR) through Artivive. The physical colour-pencil artwork acts as the trigger image. When the viewer opens the Artivive app and points their camera at the original artwork, the app recognises the artwork and activates the digital animation, causing the static portrait to appear as though it is digitally deteriorating in real time. Artivive is specifically designed to overlay digital content such as videos and animations onto physical artworks. This interaction is significant because the viewer experiences the concept of Digital Decay rather than simply observing it. The artwork begins as something physical, handmade and permanent, but through AR it becomes connected to a constantly changing digital layer. This creates a relationship between the traditional medium of colour pencil and modern digital technology, questioning whether our memories and identities remain permanent in an increasingly digital world.