Open Call Submission: Home Collection 2023

We are inviting submissions for our upcoming AR art exhibition, Home Collection 2023, which will be featured on our app Tethered Publics, across the UK. The focus of this exhibition is on exploring the concept of collecting and displaying items within the domestic space. This is an unpaid opportunity for emerging to mid-career artists interested in presenting their work through augmented reality (AR).

We are seeking digital artifacts, such as 3D models, that are representative of items one might find in or around the home, such as artwork, antiques, furniture, collectibles, or decorative objects. We can handle the AR implementation but want you to consider how your object would exist in virtual 3D space to create unique and engaging experiences for the viewer. Your work could be static, animated, interactive, resizable, or include audio.

We welcome art objects from a variety of cultures, voices, or time periods. They may have personal, collective, or historical significance to you or may highlight underrepresented voices and perspectives within the theme of domestic living. They should be appropriate to be displayed in a domestic space, evoking the feelings and emotions associated with the home, in any way this could mean to you.

The goal of this exhibition is to allow viewers to experience and collect items in a novel way, through AR technology, without the physical limitations and constraints of ownership. We want to challenge traditional notions of collecting and displaying items at home and push boundaries of what is possible in terms of decor.

At Tethered Publics, we’re focused on making emerging technologies more accessible to artists. This could be an opportunity for you to exhibit your work through AR without the overheads of developing an application for yourself. We want to encourage artists to think about how their work could be translated into virtual 3D space. For example, you could repurpose existing 3D objects, use an app to scan your real-world objects or create your own.

All submissions should be in the form of 3D models compatible with AR display and should provide a link to download the object through the form in the open call. Specific details on file formats will be given in the submission form. We will also accept image or audio submissions but expect you to provide instructions on how your work might exist in AR, i.e. for images: wall mounted, in a photo frame, or other.

Overall, we are looking for digital objects that push boundaries and challenge the viewer to think about the theme of home collections in novel ways through AR technology.

The deadline for submission will be on the 12th March 2023. With a planned exhibition launch date of mid April. 

Tethered Publics is curational project that uses a mobile app to exhibit site-specific digital art. It is run by a very small group of independent artists with tech skills. We launched our app on IOS late last year, developing it alongside our first exhibition. Our first show, Digitally Specific, featured a range of AR and audio visual artworks, exhibited in-app across locations in South London. In 2023, we are extending our exploration of mobile based art, with a continued focus on building collaborative relationships to facilitate the creation and exhibition of work utilising emerging technologies. 

For more infomation see our website, or feel free to contact us at contact@tetheredpublics.app.

Please use this section to give information about your artwork. 

On Supported 3D model/scene File Formats

To create AR views, IOS applications use .usdz, .reality or reality composer files. However, in many cases, you don't need to send us your work in this format as we can use software Apple provides to convert it for you, such as Reality Converter.

Here is a short but inconclusive list of what we know we can convert from: .obj, .gltf, .fbx. 

We are currently developing an Android version of the app which we hope to release alongside this exhibition. There are still a few unknowns here but we are using Google's ARCore kit for this. .obj, .gltf and .fbx formats should work well here. IOS .reality or Reality Composer scene formats, especially those with interactive features would not be easily converted so would pose issues supporting cross platform. 

For interactive scenes, we may be able to programme some interactivity for you but might not have the time resources to do so.

Its recomended to also send any textures and assets seperately as these can, sometimes get lost in the conversion process. 

For 3D objects with accompanying audio, just include the file seperately. 

In general, our advice is not to worry to much about file formats. If needed, we can sort out the formatting for you and will check that your happy with the output quality. We will also get back in touch if there are any issues. 

Submissions close midnight 12th March 2023.

We may contact you before this with any queries.