VCUarts Qatar takes part in Tokyo Designart Festival

Doha, Qatar: Exhibits created by faculty, staff and students from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar), a Qata...

Doha, Qatar: Exhibits created by faculty, staff and students from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar), a Qatar Foundation partner university, were part of the prestigious Tokyo Designart Festival that took place in October 2024.

The event was hosted by Januka, a jewellery brand founded in 2012 by Jo Nakamura, a designer with an educational background from Pratt Institute and the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven. Januka is known for its innovative approach, blending traditional techniques with experimental materials and processes.

The festival’s theme, ‘Reframing - the Beginning of a Shift’, inspired the University’s designers - Hala Amer (current Digital Design + Fabrication Coordinator and interior design alumna), Saga Elkabbash (current MFA in Design student and interior design alumna), Levi Hammett (Associate Professor and Inaugural Director of Kinetic Imaging), Giovanni Innella (Associate Professor, Graduate Studies), and Martin Basalan Juras (Computation & Electronics Technician, Kinetic Imaging) - to interpret “Reframing” in a tangible, immersive way.

Using readily available hardware and software, they created ‘Street Scanner’, an interactive installation that invited passersby to engage with and explore the captivating and, at times, unsettling aesthetics generated by machine vision.

The installation transformed the store window at Januka into a dynamic frame, capturing and broadcasting the world outside in real-time. The storefront became both a lens and a stage, inviting passersby to interact with the surroundings through a new perspective that blended art, design, and urban life into a continuous visual dialogue.