Uncanny Garden

Uncanny Garden emerges from a collaboration between Techspressionist visual artist Randi Matushevitz, AR artist Bin Youn, and sound composer Gustavo Guzmán. Rooted in Matushevitz's ongoing exploration of the Flowergirl figure, the work extends her visual world into augmented space and original sound.

Drawing from both Western and East Asian elemental philosophies, the work maps five elemental energies onto hand gesture, 3D botanical form, and spatial position within an augmented reality field. Each element carries its cardinal direction, season, and color into a surrealist landscape inhabited by the Maiden archetype: the flower girl, seeding, blooming, transforming. Participants invoke each figure through sustained gestures, becoming co-authors in a mediated ritual.

At its center, Uncanny Garden holds the ancient fertility symbol not as a relic but as an uncanny living presence. The work holds space for duality: interior and exterior self, the imagined and the real, what we reveal and what we conceal. The grandiose self and the shadow self can coexist.

Techspressionism provides the philosophical ground for this encounter between the digital and the elemental. What is old is made new: ancient ritual, spirit, and myth experienced through contemporary technology, art, and music as a 21st-century act of seeing and becoming.

How it works

The work is browser-based and requires no application installation. Activated by QR code in a standard mobile browser, it uses the device camera for real-time hand tracking and spatial AR. A custom hand gesture classifier maps five hand positions across ancient elemental cosmology (木火土金水): open palm to Wood, raised index to Fire, closed fist to Soil, peace sign to Metal, and OK ring to Water. A 1.5-second hold creates a deliberate moment before each summoning.

Each summoned figure grows over 36 seconds, recedes, and rests as a glowing orb that can be tapped back to life. Once all five are grown, they form a ring surrounding the viewer; reaching toward one through the camera mutates it, permanently. Summoned Flowergirls are accompanied by lush strings pulverized via granular and FM processing, elemental sounds triggered by gesture, creating sonic disorientation that embodies the work's surrealist vision.

Exhibition history