A participatory XR art event was held at Shibuya’s MIYASHITA PARK, where visitors used AR and 5G millimetre-wave communications to draw and create together in the same AR space. Through live painting and visitor participation, attendees experienced AR content layered over the real-world surroundings and transforming them into a single artwork.
The real-world space was transformed into a giant AR canvas, where artist Manabu Morita (森田 学) and students from Tokyo Designplex Institute staged a live painting performance, while visitors used their smartphones to draw freely in the same AR space. Despite temperatures exceeding 35°C, approximately 30 people participated, making the event a distinctive collaborative art experience in a public space. Individual expressions were layered in real time against real buildings and scenery, showing how they could evolve into a single artwork.
The event was held as part of “Shibuya Playground.” By using the high-speed, high-capacity, low-latency communications of 5G millimetre-wave technology to distribute the AR canvas to multiple devices, an environment was created in which many participants could share virtually the same artwork at almost the same time. VPS was also used to anchor the AR content with a high degree of precision and overlay it onto specific points in the real-world space.
In a survey conducted after the event, 87.5% of respondents rated their satisfaction with the AR painting experience at 4 or higher, while some items received more than 100% of respondents indicating that they would like to continue experiencing AR in the future. Participants and event officials expressed expectations for the use of AR in public spaces and the broader scope for creative expression enabled by high-speed communications, and responded positively to the experience of sharing the same AR space with multiple people.
The combination of technology and artistic expression demonstrated the potential to temporarily transform public spaces into places for creation and interaction, while the ease of operation, communications environment and safe methods of use were identified as issues for further consideration. Shibuya Future Design has indicated that it will work with KDDI and others to advance the social implementation of urban experiences using XR, AI and communications technologies.