The Masks We Wear

Every young person carries a version of themselves they show the world, and a quieter one underneath. Naming that gap is hard, and harder still to say out loud.

The challenge was to make that conversation possible, and to make it something a whole community could take part in rather than a private exercise done once and put away.

Students designed masks standing for the hopes, dreams, fears and vulnerabilities they carry around. The finished installation turns those masks outward.

A passer-by steps up, the camera finds their face, and one of the students' masks appears on it. For a moment you are wearing something a young person made about how it feels to be them.

How strong a community is tomorrow depends on the support and encouragement its young people get today. This project puts their work at eye level in a public space and asks everyone else to stand inside it for a second.

Understanding each other's hopes, dreams, fears and vulnerabilities is how a community becomes more connected rather than less.

AR has changed how people engage with what is around them, from trying on clothes to placing furniture in a room before buying it. Digital content arrives in your actual context instead of staying behind glass.

That is exactly what this project needed. It is authentic and immediate in a way a screening is not: you do not watch the mask, you wear it.

Students built the masks in Reality Composer, a free iPad app, so nothing about the workflow was gated behind a licence or a lab.

The installation runs on an iPhone connected to a display over HDMI. It leans on Apple's built-in AR, including the automatic opening of Reality and USDZ files, so AR Quick Look detects the face of whoever approaches and superimposes a mask, with audio and visual effects.

All of it runs on device. No face is uploaded anywhere. Privacy was a design decision rather than an afterthought, which matters when the participants are children and the venue is a public shop floor.

The project was showcased at the Apple Michigan Avenue store as part of Everyone Can Code + Create, a collaboration with the Everyone Can Code Chicago program set against the backdrop of the City of Chicago.

Student work stood in one of the busiest rooms in the city, worn by whoever walked past it.

The AR is the hook, but it is not the point. What people remember is the second where a stranger's mask sits on their own face and something clicks.

Technology is at its best here when it gets out of the way and leaves two people understanding each other slightly better than before.