Dream Herder is a 2020 street art mural I installed in residential North-East Harare. I added interactivity using AR to overlay original animation of goats and flower petals passing by the central boy figure. Using Unity, I made a mobile app which recognizes the original street artwork, tracks it, and overlays the animation

What interested me most with this project was exploring the potential of augmented reality technology to connect street art and animation. AR is a potentially great tool in creatively democratizing public space. Most of which is currently monopolized by corporate billboards and logistical signage.

Dream Herder
Augmented Reality (AR) Street Mural
200 x 190 cm
2020

Pirate is a painting which I extended in 2021 using AR to bring together painting, animation, and poetry. In Unity, I made a mobile app which recognizes the original painting, tracks it, and overlays the animation along with a recording of the poem I wrote from the perspective of a convicted pirate from the Horn of Africa.

Pirate
Acrylic on wood panel
81 x 48 cm
2018

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kombo Chapfika (@ckombo)

That's What It's There For is an Augmented Reality app that adds animation and spoken word to a painting I did in late 2018. Painting done by hand, animation done in After Effects, interactivity done using Unity.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Fak'ugesi (@fakugesi)

No Street Vendors was my first foray into Augmented Reality (AR). I produced this during my first ever residency at Fak'ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival 2017. During this time I noticed there had been a drive to gentrify parts of Johannesburg over the previous decade. With the arrival of galleries and coffee shops, street vendors were no longer welcome and these common street signs made that clear.

I made this AR app that recognizes the common street signs and overlays an animation of the vendor freeing himself from the restricting bar, and breifly celebrating, before the bar returns and the cycle loops.

We Were Where is a 2018 documentary 360 film captured on-site during the protests that preceded the ouster of then Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

Tens of thousands of Zimbabweans took to the streets in major cities and towns on Saturday, November 18, 2017 to demand the country’s then President Robert Mugabe leave office immediately. The mass marches came after an unprecedented week which saw the army's top brass seize power and putting Mugabe under house arrest in response to his sacking of then Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.