The Music Walk of Fame – David Bowie

// services

Experiential Design

Motion Design

Video Production

No-app WebAR Bowie tribute Solarflare built for The Music Walk of Fame's David Bowie induction in Camden, letting visitors scan the plaque to see Bowie appear in AR.

Bowie in Camden, no app required

We built this WebAR tribute for The Music Walk of Fame's David Bowie induction, timed to the release of the Moonage Daydream documentary in late 2022. The installation was physical: a permanent plaque on the pavement in Camden, the neighbourhood that shaped Bowie's early career. Scan the plaque and Bowie appears in AR, scaled to life, in the street around you.The no-app constraint was not a limitation but a design decision. Plaques are permanent. App ecosystems are not. A QR code that routes to a browser-based AR experience will still work in five years regardless of what happens to any given app store or operating system. For a permanent public installation honouring a cultural figure, longevity and accessibility matter more than native performance.

Designing the experience around the location

Camden was not incidental to the project. It was the subject. We designed the AR presentation to feel grounded in the environment rather than dropped on top of it, using surface tracking and scaled placement so Bowie reads as present in the street rather than floating above it. The animation and character design drew on his visual identity across the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane periods, the reference points that the location and the documentary most naturally connected to.The trigger design had to work on a physical plaque in variable outdoor lighting conditions, including overcast UK days, direct sunlight, and night-time. We built and tested the image target against a realistic range of conditions before installation.

What this model does for cultural institutions

The Music Walk of Fame project demonstrated a format that cultural institutions can use to extend physical markers into digital experiences without ongoing app maintenance. A WebAR layer on a plaque, a blue badge, or a heritage site is an investment that scales: every visitor with a phone gets access, the experience can be updated remotely, and the QR code works as a distribution channel without requiring any app store relationship.For the Bowie induction specifically, the activation arrived at a moment of high public interest generated by Moonage Daydream. The combination of a permanent Camden installation and a timely documentary hook drove organic social sharing that extended the reach of the Walk of Fame induction well beyond the immediate footfall at the plaque.

more projects

CASE STUDIES
SOLARFLARE STUDIO

Cardiff University – CYB-AR

ASICS – Mind Uplifter

Interactive Installation

Experiential Design

Brand Identity

View project