VIDEO: Kneeling Icon, an AR artwork from Colin Goldberg’s Metagraphs series, permanently installed in Hearst Tower, New York.

Metagraphs: Augmented Reality Art

Colin Goldberg’s Metagraphs explore the intersection of human expression and technology. Begun in 1999 in New York’s East Village as vector-based digital drawings, the series treats each work’s underlying code as the actual artwork—a “metagraph,” or meta-representation of form. Reimagined two decades later as animated AR experiences and NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, the series bridges Goldberg’s early digital practice with his ongoing exploration of Techspressionism—using technology to convey emotional experience. This evolution is documented in Metagraphs: Augmented Reality Art, the first AR book of abstract art on Amazon, in which the 23 works animate directly on the book’s pages when viewed with a mobile device. Kneeling Icon, the work from this series shown here, was purchased by the Hearst Corporation in 2023, and is permanently installed in Hearst Tower in NYC.  It is the first AR work in the Hearst Collection, and the associated audiovisual NFT is the first blockchain work in the collection. These works are available as large-scale site-specific augmented reality commissions and as signed small editions on canvas.

Kneeling Icon, Permanent Collection, Hearst Corporation.

The 23 works in this series are below. Each piece contains a link to the audiovisual NFT. When the still image is scanned with a mobile device, the AR animation is activated.