A visionary at play: How Augmented Reality designer Christian Enriquez, in partnership with Snap and ESAW, is reimagining public art
by Mark McDermott A visitor to El Segundo’s Experimentally Structured Museum of Art could understandably have been stunned last November when snow started falling inside the main gallery. Then, suddenly, railroad tracks appeared, and a familiar little black train pulled into the museum. Somehow, as if by magic, reality was at play. The Polar Express had arrived, courtesy of a man with a black goatee and mischievous, but impishly joyful grin standing inconspicuously among other visitors, some who were likewise surprised to find themselves holding lightsabers or looking up at the towering, extraterrestrial Tree of Souls, which had sprouted up in the middle of the museum. That mysterious man, Christian Enriquez, has a word for what those around him were experiencing. He calls it “amplified” reality, and in this case, he had an already altered reality with which to work – the work of Hollywood production designer Rick Carter, famed for the worlds he created for Star Wars, Avatar, and The Polar Express, among others. The more technical term for what Enriquez does is Augmented Reality, or AR, and in the emerging field of AR designers, he’s a rising star. “He’s like a Jedi Master,” said…
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