BORINQUÉN
An Interactive Gallery of Puerto Rican Art & Culture
I was asked to create a piece of art for a local independent gallery at Emerson College. I knew this was the perfect opportunity to showcase how easy interactive galleries could be made and the perfect opportunity to showcase Puerto Rican art and heritage.
From the moment I began the project to completion only took 3 days. Though I have a Mac version of the project you can download at the bottom of this page, sadly the project was corrupted when I tried adding new elements after the gallery, so I cannot create Windows or online builds.
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As a Puerto Rican American, it was such a blessing to share the art and culture of my past and have conversations surrounding its origins and development.
RECREATING PUERTO RICO'S TOPOGRAPHY
I wanted players to walk on top of the entirety of the island of Puerto Rico to consider the simplicity and origin of this land. The way I tackled this was by creating heightmaps that Unity used to generate the object. Players could identify the height of El Yunque, the outline of San Juan, and more.Â
(Click on photos for more Information)
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CLOTH SIMULATION
A lot of the techniques used in this project were ones I had been using for a while, and the biggest difficulty was creating a good looking cloth simulation to showcase Mundillos, a weaving method popular on the island. You can see on the left this area with photos and plaques that describe and show real examples of mundillos. In addition, the area is surrounded by the cloth simulations suspended in the air. Players loved jumping into and staring at its intricate patterns.
RECREATING REAL ART
I also generated normal maps from various famous paintings from Latinx artists, resulting in an extremely interesting representation of mediums. For example, for this piece, the thick acrylic strokes resulted in depth, and with a metallic material, the piece takes a completely different look.
 Grillo RecreationA complete recreation of the multi-media piece by Jean Michel-Basqait. I used photos of the piece from online at many different angles to recreate the depth and detail of the original. |  Close-Up ReflectionNotice from this angle how the depth of the piece appears and reflects light. |  Black Panel TextureA photo I obtained from an HD photo of the piece. I edited it slightly to remove white planks that were originally on the left. |
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 Black Panel Normal MapI then was able to generate a normal map out of Photoshop from the texture. Unity uses this to render depth without increasing the polygon count of an object. |
BORINQUÉN MAC BUILD
Press below to download a version of this experience that can run on Apple Operating Systems. If you experience an error running the build because it is "from an Unidentified Developer," reference this article for support.