Mahogany L. Browne—award-winning poet, educator, and Lincoln Center's inaugural Poet-in-Residence—brings her signature voice of empowerment and reflection to Our Echoes Be Bloom. The work transforms her poetry into a living experience that unfurls across Lincoln Center's architecture, celebrating language as a force for connection, healing, and collective transformation.
Our Echoes Be Bloom
Spatial Poetry by Mahogany L. Browne
Our Echoes Be Bloom is a poetic augmented reality installation by Mahogany L. Browne, presented at Lincoln Center's Josie Robertson Plaza as part of the Lincoln Center Immersive series. This interactive experience transforms the plaza into a living poem, where words drift across architecture and space in a dance of light and language. Through web-based AR technology created by EyeJack, Browne's verses bloom into motion, inviting reflection on voice, presence, and the power of collective expression.
The Poet
Collaboration
EyeJack creative director Sutu collaborated with Mahogany L. Browne to transform Our Echoes Be Bloom into an immersive AR installation that unfolds across Lincoln Center's Josie Robertson Plaza. Using the site's architecture as a canvas, the poem's verses and hand-drawn animations bloom in space, turning words into living forms that invite reflection, connection, and wonder.
Experience
Visitors access Our Echoes Be Bloom through a custom-built WebXR experience, available by scanning a QR code onsite at Lincoln Center. Once launched in their mobile browser, the AR installation reveals verses of Mahogany L. Browne's poem woven across the plaza. When the user points their camera towards a part of a poem, the verse animates and plays Browne's voice reciting the poem. Soft blue highlights trace the words in sync with her reading, helping visitors follow along visually while listening. The experience also includes a full audio tour narrated by Browne and integrates ARIA tags for screen reader compatibility, ensuring accessibility for audiences who are blind or have low vision.
The App
Our Echoes Be Bloom was designed as a web experience, using WebXR to deliver native AR quality directly in the browser. To begin, visitors are guided to the front of The Metropolitan Opera House (The Met) and taken through a short, gamified calibration sequence that prompts them to move and look around while the Visual Positioning System locks onto surrounding buildings. Once calibrated, the AR content is revealed.
