Have you ever tried to use a self-service guide when you were visiting a museum? The ones often available are audio guides and text descriptions on the walls. In this project, we tried to make the guides a bit more fun through use of augmented reality a letting you click on different elements in a painting, so you can easily discover the painting's story. You can check it out in the video recording :)
To try out our guide, we picked a famous painting called The Ambassadors, which is hanging in The National Gallery in London. It was painted by Hans Holbein, who really gave it a rich story, and also added this anamorphic distorted skull that is sitting under the ambassadors' feet. All of it is shortly explained in the guide that can be used either on a smartphone or on smart glasses similar to the Google Glass. Both of these devices can be easily carried around during a museum visit, it's just up to the preference and availability.
When we were making the guide for The Ambassadors, it was important to design how the visitors could interact with the painting and chose to hear about the elements that they have interest for, but at the same time get a full story of the painting. Inspiring ourselves from theories in the field of interactive storytelling, we believe we found the balance and the guide can give the people a satisfying and creative experience.
Another feature we experimented with was guiding people's attention to what the audio explanation is about. After different tries, we added a pointer with a playful glowing tail. It flies around and takes them through the guidance. This same concept was taken on to develop augmented reality for Utzon Center, a local museum to present stories of artwork that the conductors of the museum set. Augmented reality has potential and we won't be left behind for exploring its future.
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