On 1 April 2026, at Millennium in Lausanne, Cybel’Art presented Steve Wozniak with an augmented-reality plaque dedicated to the Apple I. The evening marked fifty years since Apple was founded on 1 April 1976. This was not a commercial product launch or a partnership announcement: the plaque was a gift made for that encounter.
A printed object that opens an AR experience
The piece brings together Apple I schematics, archive imagery and the rainbow Apple logo. When scanned through the Real Illusions app, it opens an augmented-reality scene related to the pioneering computer. The purpose was to place a physical object in conversation with a technological story, rather than turn an archive into digital decoration.
That approach reflects the work of Cybel’Art: creating experiences that leave room for emotion, people and the stories attached to them. Here, augmented reality is an additional way of reading the piece. It does not replace the printed artefact or the history it recalls; it provides another route into its context.
A meeting, without an added promise
After the keynote and during the gala dinner, Pierluigi Christophe Orunesu presented the plaque to Steve Wozniak, with his wife Janet beside him. The gesture was deliberately straightforward: to share a creation inspired by the Apple I inventor, without a promotional photo opportunity or a proposal for a commercial association.
That distinction matters. The Real Illusions activation was operational at the event, but the account does not announce ongoing availability, an Apple licence or a future collaboration. It records a one-off exchange and an object created for a specific occasion.
A continuity of immersive formats
Within the agency’s creative path, the plaque connects with other explorations of presence and transmission: captures, augmented-reality work and immersive environments featured in our work. OSR Virtual Hall®, whose first public trials took place in January 2025, and Virtual Hall® belong to the same exploration of proximity to a real performance, while remaining distinct from the plaque presented in Lausanne.
For a broader view of that practice, the AR and VR agency outlines the fields Cybel’Art works across. The evening of 1 April 2026 shows how a technological gesture can remain a gesture of attention: giving a contemporary form to a story that matters.
Editorial adaptation of the article by Pierluigi Christophe Orunesu, originally published on Substack on 11 April 2026. Read the original article on Substack