Interactions, Interventions and Interpretations

with Prof. Uche Okeke’s Archive.

We will now go to Kpaaza, 2021-22

Report for Artworks processes for WWNGTK by Jere Ikongio

OVERVIEW
Proposal: Final:

This research process projected to interact with Uche Okeke’s classics, building on an initial
research into the proponents and periodic translations of the Uli design system - traditional
or modern - as well as the contemporary and digital (virtual) manifestations of the concept
of Natural Synthesis adopted by Prof. Okeke and the Zaria Art Society. With an emphasis on
the research process being as important as the research results or the resulting artwork
mediums diverse media have been adopted for this process, flowing along with new media
and emerging tech and rapidity of digital technologies. With Prof. Okeke’s art being the
constant, the forms explored include text, voice, animation, Installation, 3D models and
augmented reality, highlighting okeke’s transdisciplinarity and art making processes.

Proposed Research Date: December, 2021 to April 2022

GOALS

I. 3D models (with AR)

II. Animation and Sound (with AR)
III. Sound Installation (with XR)
The proposed idea was to digitalise Sculptures using Photogrammetry, to produce
interactive 3D Models Assets that can be inspected on the web as well as with Augmented
Reality, re-interpret digital copies of the Biafra Posters, and Poetic writings on line
drawings originally made on paper through 2D Animation, Augmented Reality, 3D Text and
Oral renditions. The curators ensured we stayed on track with time suggestions and advice.

With an additional plan to create a participatory sonic installation using audio of Poems
and music enhanced with Cross Reality, Electronic hardware and software. Producing a
soundscape that can be experienced digitally (using headsets, geolocation app) or
physically (with Raspberry Pi set up, Sensors, Speakers).

By the opening of the exhibition we have been able to produce, despite some production
and communication challenges, four 3D Models, 3 animated videos and 6 audio rendition
of poetry by Prof. Uche Okeke. These artworks are a work in progress and continue to
evolve with time, as most artworks do. Using digital assets and processes to document,
investigate, reinterpret and animate prof Okeke’s artworks has been revealing. Expanding
on his idea of Natural Synthesis, utilizing material contemporary artistic and immaterial
technological products - influence and knowledge of the past alongside consideration for
posterity - the phygital project allows space for multiplicity and metaphysicality.

Digital 3D Works

The 3D artworks adopts meta photography, with the use of hundreds of still images, to
transform materiality into immateriality and create an interactivity feature. The 3D models
are high quality with the smallest model having Triangles: 260.9k & Vertices: 130.5k and the
 largest model having Triangles: 813.3k & Vertices: 406.6k. The objects can also be
experienced through Augmented Reality by scanning QR codes.

Animated Poetry, 3 Channel Video, 4k, Stereo.

The poems of Uche Okeke come to life through a 2D animated 3 Channel video installation,
using playful and contemporary interpretations as well as digital assets. Audio is an integral
part of this project. Using an enigmatic character drawing of Prof. Okeke, titled Nza the
smart, as the subject of an overlapping and connected short story, One part of the 3
channel video installation shows Nza the smart transform from an egg to a life size figure,
while drifting, crawling and walking through three artworks that serve as the background
and locations for Nza’s journey.

+ +
SCENE 1 (Mamiwata) SCENE 2 (Agu Araba) SCENE 3 (Ewu)

Subject (NZA THE SMART)

Sound Installation
The Sound installation animates the poetry of Prof. Okeke through oral performances, field
recordings, digital sonic assets and an online database.The sound collection includes oral
rendition of poems like Obele’s Laments, War Zone and Home of Images.

Each box uses 2 poems of similar themes, one box contains poems about nature (water
and forest), another box has poems about war and the diverse repercussions like refugees
while the third box has poems about philosophical issues like life and death, loss and gains.

Soundscape for Mami Water Poetry and Drawing

An upcoming feature would use a webapp to invite the audience to participate, through
recording their own rendition of one of Prof Okeke's poems and add it to a digital collection
that will be exhibited as a chorus of different voice types and languages, each distinct. Also
animated drawings can be seen as virtual layers on prints of the original drawings with
augmented reality.