Client: JW Marriott; Prospera Hospitality

Overview

shimé is a 3-piece sculptural narrative on the JW Marriott Garden Deck in Anaheim, layered with an interactive Augmented Reality experience.  As guests explore the 3 sculptures, they interact with a performative meditation via the shimé mobile app that generates a personalized digital Tree to permanently live in the Garden, taking its color and shape from the decisions made during the experience. The Tree’s height & growth depends on the repetition of a mantra.

– “Karma Seed” is an infinitely looping 3D solid. In Augmented Reality, each guest chooses their favorite seed with different colors and visual effects.
– “Vitarka Sapling” is Buddha’s right hand pinching a lotus blossom. In Augmented Reality, each guest chooses 1 of 12 mantras, creating their Tree’s shape.
– “Pipal Portal” is a silhouette of a woman doing yoga’s Tree pose & turning into a Tree. In Augmented Reality, a digital forest of all guests’ Trees is revealed.

Goals

JW Marriott crafted a meditative edible garden for their outdoor deck. Mindfulness and calm are important aspects of their 5-star public spaces, so we created a performative meditation art installation that merges these concepts with interactive augmented reality to generate a personalized digital artifact that becomes a visual representation of each guest's ongoing visits to the Garden Deck. As the guest returns and performs more mantras with their Tree, it grows taller and wider, so whomever has the tallest Tree in the Garden has the deepest relationship with the Hotel.

Process

HEAVY took all of the core branding elements of the JW Marriott chain, as well as the visual design elements of this particular hotel, and crafted multiple narratives for the ownership team to choose from. Each narrative involved a story line as well as visual mood boards and interactive guidelines. Taking feedback from the ownership team, we incorporated additional guidelines into the final performance, resulting in a world premiere of this kind of technology coupled with sculptural art and acting as a proxy for loyalty points with the hotel.

Additional Information

The pieces were installed March 6 2020, immediately prior to the shutdown of public spaces due to CoronaVirus. Additionally, as the landscaping matures in the Garden, we will update our individual imagery for each piece to capture each in its current setting.