David Bowie’s Birthday Celebrated in Tool’s AR app

David Bowie touched many lives with his musical and artistic contributions, so it’s no wonder that Tool of North America wanted to do something to commemorate what would have been his 71st-birthday.

Although he passed away almost two years ago, his birthday falls next Monday on January 8, and to mark this occasion Tool started thinking about the artist and his willingness to evolve creatively.

The production company imagined that Bowie would have experimented with AR and so created Modern Love AR, a project that blends the real with the digital worlds using Apple’s AR Kit platform (more info on the perks of this tool here).

In the above promo to promote the tool Modern Love AR, Bowie’s music acts as the soundtrack for two girls walking down the street snapping each other on the smartphones and then overlapping psychedelic colours and shapes on top of the original picture - to create a Bowie-inspired montage.

“This project was an experiment for us to see how we play with perception to blur the line between the physical and augmented world,” says Tool’s creative director, Clay Weishaar. “Modern Love AR is meant to be experienced while you move through your environment. The combination of camera art, atmospheric effects and audio reactive visuals felt like the perfect blend for such an inspiring track.”

The app is available on the App Store.