SHELBY — Shelby High School graduate Brian Yetzer — an award-winning augmented reality experience designer, digital artist and educator — returns to his alma mater Nov. 24 for a day of exhibits, student talks and a free public presentation titled “Layers of Reality: Art, Technology & Imagination.”
The visit is sponsored by the Shelby High School Alumni Association.
All sessions will take place in the Shelby High School Performing Arts Center.
During the school day, the 51-year-old Yetzer will display his artwork and speak with high school students as well as third through eighth graders. At 7:30 p.m., he will deliver a presentation open to the entire community.
Yetzer, who graduated in 1993, works at the intersection of art, technology and science.
Augmented reality — digital images and animation overlaid onto the physical world using a phone, tablet or headset — is one of several computer graphics technologies he uses.
Through his company, Yetzer Studio, he has designed augmented reality experiences since 2010 for schools, museums and businesses across North America and Europe, including Intel and Siemens Gamesa.
His best-known project is an app designed for The Franklin Institute’s “Terracotta Warriors” exhibition in Philadelphia.
Featured in The New York Times, the app allows visitors to point their phones at 2,200-year-old statues to view the warriors’ restored swords and spears.
His Nikola Tesla AR app and interactive posters, recognized as the first mobile AR app honoring the inventor, received the Nikola Tesla Spirit Art and Educational Technology Award in New York and have been showcased at COSI in Columbus.
For the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion, his team developed an app displaying a monarch butterfly emerging from its chrysalis on the museum’s mural.
Yetzer’s entry into augmented reality began with traditional art. His background includes sketching, painting, animation, photography, 3D printing and interaction design, a multidisciplinary foundation he credits with shaping his mixed-reality perspective.
During “Layers of Reality,” Yetzer will discuss and demonstrate augmented reality through his interactive posters before broadening the discussion to other computer graphics technologies from his career.
He also plans to present his recent digital artwork and electronic music experiments, including a brief demonstration of a synthesizer combining art, sound and touch.
“I am thrilled to welcome Brian back to Shelby High School. His incredible journey from our classrooms to the cutting edge of augmented reality is a perfect example of where a Shelby education can lead,” said Randy Broderick, president of the Shelby High School Alumni Association.
“We hope his visit inspires our current students to dream big and explore the endless possibilities at the intersection of art and technology.”
Yetzer said he was excited to come home to Shelby to share his work with students and the community.
“I hope to spark curiosity and show how art, technology and imagination can come together — not just to create something new, but to make a meaningful difference,” he said.
Admission to the 7:30 p.m. presentation is free, courtesy of the Shelby High School Alumni Association.