Prof. Jill Miller at ICA SF

Professor Jill Miller and collaborator Melody Chang have created an augmented reality (AR) sculptural installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, on view through April 30th. The ICASF exhibition, Dog Pack, is an AR environment that uses the Institute of Contemporary Art SF as a site for exploring Dogpatch neighborhood lore in a fantastical and fabulative way. The work combines virtual objects with the physical space to create a hybrid ecosystem where visitors engage in a participatory artwork.

The ICASF is a new museum space in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. Drawing on urban legends about the origin of the Dogpatch name, Dog Pack is a site-specific project that explores and embellishes local lore about wild dog packs roaming the neighborhood, feeding off of slaughterhouse scraps from 3rd Street processing plants. These dog packs purportedly “ruled” Bayview and Dogpatch neighborhoods from mid-1800s for the next century as the neighborhood shifted from rural to industrial. While there are three competing stories about the origin of the Dogpatch name, this work focuses on one: wild dogs.

By situating the audience-participant in both a virtual environment and a physical space, Dog Pack blurs the boundaries between the real and the imagined, the historical and the present. The work grounds itself in the conceptual art of the 1960s, a time when questions about the nature and necessity of the physical art object were primary. The project nods toward modern-day artmaking, where semiological questions about the nature of art have new meaning as technology has advanced and AR objects are both “here” and “not here” simultaneously.

Note: Black and white text on walls belong to artist Chris Martin. Dog pack is located within his existing installation at ICASF.

A real dog and pack of augmented reality dogs at the ICASF gallery. Chris Martin's text and sculptures in background.