South by Southwest, more famously known as SXSW, will be honoring Breonna Taylor’s life at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival through technology.
During the event, from March 11 to March 20, SXSW will be screening a virtual reality form of the augmented reality program, “Breonna’s Garden.” Using a headset, it will be turned into a VR experience for attendees to join in on remembering and memorializing Taylor’s legacy by putting them into her world.
“Breonna’s Garden honors the life and memory of Breonna Taylor while cultivating a safe healing space for anyone to plant a message of hope for Breonna’s family or a personal message in remembrance of someone they miss,” a spokesperson said in a statement for the festival on the SXSW site.
The original form of the program, an AR app, meshes together the users’ physical world and the virtual world using a variety of different techniques such as sight, sound and motion. By giving the users the ability to do things like control what they’re seeing simply by moving, the AR program allows users to use reality to control the digital world as it responds in real-time to “spend” a day with Taylor.
Soundtracked by Mary J. Blige’s “Everything,” the song Taylor wanted as her wedding song when she would’ve married her boyfriend Kenny Walker, “Breonna’s Garden” gives viewers a glimpse into Taylor’s life, depicting her in day-to-day situations.
Viewers can see Taylor in a montage of moments of happiness doing things like laughing with family members, embracing her mother, dancing in a car and smiling. Taylor’s loved ones, Tamika Palmer, Ju’Niyah Palmer and Walker, also take part in the app, telling stories about who she was as a person.
Throughout the program, Taylor can be seen standing ethereally in a garden full of tulips, her favorite flower. More flowers are added to Breonna’s “garden” when users record voice messages that take on the form of crystal flowers when they’re played back.
The AR program was originally created and released in 2021 by a digital artist known as Lady Phoenix. She reached out to Taylor’s little sister, Ju’Niyah, with the idea of an AR app to help her deal with the grief of her sister’s murder. After creating the app alongside Ju’Niyah, both women agreed that the creation should be released to the public to help everyone deal with Taylor’s death.
Taylor was killed on March 13, 2020, when three white police officers barged into her home and fired 32 shots. Currently, almost two years to the day, Taylor still has yet to receive justice, even after the global outcry following her death. Brett Hankinson, one of the police officers involved in her death, was recently acquitted of the charges this year on March 3 with the verdict signifying the end of any potential charges towards the three police officers- according to AP News.
As people still continue to protest for Taylor, Lady Phoenix’s app helps attach more than injustice to her name by focusing on her life that was full of love and associating Taylor with healing and wellbeing.
“It’s not fair to her to attach the energy of all of that to her name,” said Lady Phoenix in a press release. “That’s not who she is. That’s not who she was.”
