Virtual Cat Adoption,Gradully Melt the Sky, Devotion Gallery, April 8, 2011

"Found cat, free to good home. Well-mannered. Likes attention but keeps to itself. Orange with spots, white belly."

Virtual Cat Adoption is an Augmented Reality performance by Kristin Lucas that took place on the opening night of "Gradually Melt the Sky", a curatorial project by Mark Skwarek and Will Pappenheimer, at Devotion Gallery in Brooklyn.

At the opening, Lucas interviewed potential adoption candidates with "virtual" care focused questions. Adopted cats were to be relocated to the adoptive parent's home address using a geolocation method of Augmented Reality. All 3d cat files were originally sourced from royalty-free inventories and sharing communities of the internet, then digitally polished up and prepped for augmentation by Lucas. Cats could be viewed in the gallery by running a free app on a smartphone or WiFi-enabled tablet.

Lucas's disclaimer, "Due to network anomolies and inclemental weather patterns, the cats have been known to wander across the river into New Jersey, but they always comes back."