Oxymoron Tiling

OXYMORON TILING – AZULEJO OXÍMORO

Margarida Sardinha 2018-19

Please download the app, hoover over the façade with the phone’s camera and enjoy!

Oxymoron Tiling - Azulejo Oxímoro is a site-specific installation where Portuguese kitchen azulejos (tiles) are literally linked to oxymoron as an “eternal present”. Being a literary rhetorical figure of speech, it is often referred to one’s memory of food’s taste reminding us in a metaphorical sense of such memory – one that due to its emotional intensity has made us loose the sense of time. On the other hand, Oximoron Tiling also invites us to crystallise the moments and flavours experienced in Cantina LX restaurant as future Proustian enduring emotional memories.

The installation comprises large-scale anamorphic optical illusions and AR – Augmented Reality – visually patterned with Portuguese azulejos (tiles) typically used in kitchens throughout the country that fill and spatially distort the outside walls of Cantina LX. By interconnecting the concepts of fractal continuum with that of an “eternal present” the passer-by experiences in a playful manner the distorted patterns from different angles of the reflective façade as atemporal emotional “bubbles” in Augmented Reality and anamorphic optical illusions reflected in cones.

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour…” - William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Technical Support

AR Developer - Michael van der Noordt

Printing & Setting up - Tresart