{"id":538879,"date":"2026-07-22T16:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/538879\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T16:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:34:11","slug":"technology-adds-digital-layers-to-atlanta-mural-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/538879\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology adds digital layers to Atlanta mural tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Point your phone at the mural under the Edgewood Avenue bridge \u2014 a red face with piercing brown eyes set against a background of boldy colored flora, \u2014 and the e underpass changes. A second layer blooms over the first. \u201cEdgewood Embers<\/a>,\u201d an AI\/AR installation by filmmaker Nicki Lynch transforms ARRRTaddict\u2019s \u201cSomos Borincanos\u201d mural into what Lynch calls a \u201cdigital sanctuary.\u201d Visitors who scan the piece can add a name to a glowing constellation of ancestors, set to a custom 60 BPM track blending lo-fi hip-hop, gospel and Latin conga rhythms.<\/p>\n

\"ARRRTaddict'sARRRTaddict\u2019s \u201cSomos Borincanos\u201d mural under the Edgewood Avenue bridge becomes \u201cEdgewood Embers\u201d on the Atlanta AR mural tour, Altera Art: ATL. (Courtesy Altera)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the stops on an Atlanta AR mural tour called Altera Art: ATL.<\/a> Eight murals across the city. Each carrying an invisible second life that only a smartphone camera can see. No app, no ticket, no download. Just a phone and a willingness to stand still a little longer than usual.<\/p>\n

The premise sounds like a contradiction on its face. Murals are about as analog as art gets \u2014 slow to make, fixed in place, weathered by whatever the season throws at them. Augmented reality is the opposite of all that: generated, temporary, gone the instant you look away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That tension isn\u2019t lost on Natalia Gonzalez, founder of Altera<\/a>, the AI-focused media company behind the tour.\u00a0 It\u2019s the whole reason Altera produced the tour. Gonzalez had seen AR used to animate static work at a museum and thought the same idea might work on murals that had already been part of the city for years, as a way \u201cto bring them into life in a new, fresh way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every layer went up with the original muralist\u2019s permission. The technology extends the work, Gonzalez says, rather than overriding it.\u00a0 \u201cAt the core of it, they\u2019re both stories, and they\u2019re both art,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Creating cross-medium collaboration\u00a0<\/p>\n

The tour grew out of a fellowship. Over four days in late April, roughly 50 people, many with no technical background, sat through eight-hour workshops learning 8th Wall alongside generative media and storytelling craft. The cohort spent May building, in direct conversation with the muralists whose walls they\u2019d be augmenting, before eight winning pieces made the final cut. Each winner earned $1,000 and a spot on a trail timed to Atlanta\u2019s World Cup summer.<\/p>\n

In Cabbagetown, a landmark mural by FoxySwine depicts a psychedelic Cheshire cat on Wylie Street. Scan the wall now, and it springs to life: the cat coughs up a soccer ball, and Wonderland predicts the World Cup\u2019s winner. That\u2019s \u201cWe\u2019re All Mad Here,\u201d a new AR layer by Mikey DiCenso. FoxySwine\u2019s dragon mural at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Midtown also got the AR\/AI treatment, transforming into \u201cDancing Dragon\u201d under AR artist Domitri Parker.<\/p>\n

\"FoxySwine'sFoxySwine\u2019s dragon mural at the Center for Puppetry Arts becomes \u201cDancing Dragon\u201d on the Atlanta AR mural tour. (Courtesy of Altera)<\/p>\n

In Inman Park, the \u201cWE \u2665 ATL\u201d mural by YikYak and olive47 gets its own pulse: point a phone at it, and AR artist Dr. Ric Mathis\u2019s film, \u201cHeartbeat,\u201d plays. At Sweet Auburn Trail Stop #12, a marker becomes a resurrection: scan it, and \u201cWomen of Auburn,\u201d Dana Xavier Dojnik\u2019s AR layer, raises the Auburn Branch Carnegie Library \u2014 Atlanta\u2019s first public library for African Americans, demolished in 1960 \u2014 back into view. Near the heart of Little Five Points, TeMika Grooms\u2019s two-sided \u201cDigital Remix Signal Box\u201d unlocks an interactive AR game under artist James Lindsay \u2014 tap to begin, scan, hunt for hidden tokens, beat the challenge \u2014 under the title \u201cThe Flow.\u201d And Killamari Yo!\u2019s mural marking AAPI Heritage Month now carries a playful AR layer from Winston Mayo called \u201cMusic Princess,\u201d letting visitors hear the muralist tell the piece\u2019s story alongside a comedy short about the characters woven through it.<\/p>\n

Also in Little Five Points, a separate\u00a0 ARRRTaddict mural now unfolds as a six-part AR journey through Ta\u00edno culture \u2014 from ancestor spirituality to the coqu\u00ed frog to the community\u2019s modern legacy in Atlanta \u2014 built by Connor Wright using 8th Wall, Blender, Meshy and Suno.<\/p>\n

Innovation and impact<\/p>\n

Gonzalez was struck by what her fellows pulled off with almost no runway. \u201cI was still kind of like, \u2018Oh gosh, this is really difficult,\u2019\u201d she says of learning some of the tools alongside participants. \u201cWhen I saw them submit their work and it\u2019s functional and it tells the story and it looks awesome, I was like, \u2018Wow, this is so cool!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Read More:
\u2022\u00a0Mayor appoints Atlanta\u2019s first-ever senior tech advisor<\/a>
\u2022\u00a0Atlanta Beltline approves $265 million budget for 2027<\/a><\/p>\n

The tour was built in partnership with the City of Atlanta, Invest Atlanta, Atlanta Tech Hub and Avant South. Donnie Beamer, senior technology advisor to Mayor Andre Dickens, presented the tour\u2019s awards at Altera\u2019s Opening Night in June, framing the project in civic terms: \u201cThis becomes more than a competition. It\u2019s an opportunity to leave a long-lasting creative mark on the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Altera Art: ATL<\/a> tour runs through July 31. Whether it will extend beyond that is still being worked out, but Gonzalez says the format\u2019s bigger ambitions are already taking shape. Altera is expanding into what she calls Altera Media, with more experiences and studio work in the pipeline. Asked which piece most changed how she thinks about what these tools can do, Gonzalez points to Dojnik\u2019s \u201cWomen of Auburn\u201d without hesitation: \u201cThe power of these tools helped bring their story to life,\u201d she says of the librarians it resurrects, \u201cand will solidify these nine Black women in Atlanta history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Point your phone at the mural under the Edgewood Avenue bridge \u2014 a red face with piercing brown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[166081,265213,442,498,499,500,501,265214,156,265215,265216,111,139,265217,69,265218],"class_list":["post-538879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-altera","tag-arrrtaddict","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-edgewood-avenue","tag-entertainment","tag-foxyswine","tag-natalia-gonzalez","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nicki-lynch","tag-nz","tag-somos-borincanos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}