An immersive memory experience honoring the Nikkei farmers of Bellevue—and carrying their voices into the future.
↓The challenge
Emerging Radiance centers Toshio Ito, Rae Matsuoka Takekawa, and Mitsuko Hashiguchi—Japanese American farmers from Bellevue whose lives were fractured by the forced incarceration of World War II. The challenge was to transform their Densho oral histories into an intimate augmented-reality experience while treating the testimony, artwork, and historical record with care.
Recognition
Tribeca Festival · 2022
Tribeca X Award winner for Best Immersive.
Explore the farmhouse
Move across the model to turn the farmhouse. Each official QR code opens one of the three voices carried through the installation.
Full 360° rotation · Drag to explore
Experience films · 04
01 / 04▶Play film
Art, archival testimony, animation, and spatial technology come together to let history speak in the voices of the people who lived it.
Project documentary
02 / 04▶Play
Illustrated portraiture emerges from the mural into a living landscape.
AR story
03 / 04▶Play
Archival images replace the gallery walls as memory becomes environment.
AR story
04 / 04▶Play
Location, illustration, and oral history resolve into one intimate encounter.
AR story
Expanding the stories
From archive to ecosystem
I edited the Densho testimony into focused narrative moments, separated and rebuilt Michelle Kumata’s painted figures as animation-ready artwork, designed the archival worlds surrounding each storyteller, and extended the system across AR, the gallery farmhouse, seed packets, posters, the website, sound, and a Tribeca VR experience.
Credits
Meet Toshio, Rae, and Mitsuko through the official interactive farmhouse and augmented-reality experience.
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