The COVID-19 pandemic has been a difficult time for all of us. But I can’t help but notice how much new technologies are helping us cope. And these are the same technologies that I believe will revolutionize art — giving us something to look forward to after the crisis.
As the shelter-in-place orders and lockdowns came into effect, people began reaching out through multiple new platforms. From video conference calls to online games to live video streaming, people are able to stay connected and in touch. And it isn’t just the tech savvy among us who are getting on board. These platforms are making advanced communication easy for everyone.
These new platforms, completely infeasible and out of reach a short time ago, are now commonplace. That’s why they are able to keep us all in contact during isolation. Of course, communication technology had grown to be a significant part of our lives long before the crisis. But it was only after the coronavirus spread around the world that we reached for these platforms like life rafts.
''Creating and contemplating art is the heart of humanity.''
New Opportunities, New Risks
But COVID-19 has taught us another important lesson about these technologies. Despite all the video conference calls and virtual reality spaces, we still need the real world. There is no replacement for it. I video chat with my friends and family because I can’t visit them, not because I prefer a Zoom meeting over a weekend barbeque.
These technologies can be used to bring us closer to the world, but they can also keep us away. We can lose ourselves in endless video streaming and virtual reality. But if we allow ourselves to slip off into the digital space, we sacrifice the real world. We risk our participation in society, even our cultural heritage as humans on this little blue planet.
So we need to use these platforms as pathways back into the world, not excuses to leave it behind.
What better expression of our connection to the world, society, and cultural heritage than art? Creating and contemplating art is the heart of humanity. It is the oldest communication technology and still the best: able to speak the ineffable across the borders of language.
Yet, the art world seems to be stuck outside of these new platforms. These platforms bring innovations to all corners of the world. Every industry is affected by the new challenges and opportunities these technologies create. It seems every industry has had to integrate these breakthrough technologies or be passed by.
It is time the art world did the same. Not by replacing the old art world with virtual spaces, but by bringing more people into the museums and galleries with virtual tools.
Augmenting Art
At Artivive, we asked the question: what if we could take our recent advances and combine them with art?
We believed we could, using new platforms to revitalize (rather than replace) the art museum. We believed that the museum setting and technology could empower each other. The new and the old brought together.
See, when I first started visiting art museums, there was a wall between me and the artwork. It felt distant, dry, almost dead. I could stare. I could turn my head upside down. But nothing I did felt like I was really interacting with the piece in front of me.
"... in most museums we have audio guides introduced more than 70 years ago and they have become quite limited compared to the current needs of visitors."
I wanted the painting to tell its story. I wanted it to sing and dance with me. I wanted it to tell me about the painter who spent hours in her studio bringing it into being. I wanted it to tell me about how it travelled the world in the years since it left that studio. But the paintings only sat there.
I think many people feel that way, and it’s a challenge that seems to get worse with every generation. So many of us grow up feeling disconnected to this extraordinary world of expression and creativity.
Sure, there are audio guides in just about every art museum. These were a great leap forward at the time they were introduced in 1952, but let’s be honest: they’re limited. They’re an outdated solution almost 70 years old. Today, they seem like relics from a civilization lost to the sands of time — like aqueducts, gas street lamps, and VHS tapes.
Ultimately, audio guides are just disembodied voices, nicely spoken though they are. All they can do is rattle off information. It’s an improvement over nothing, but with the tools we have now, they are ready for the dustbin of history.
Audio guides lack interactivity and are far from engaging. You cannot ask the ghostly voice a question, and the voice can only speak, never show. It’s more akin to listening to an art history lecture than seeing a painting come to life.
It’s hard to believe we’re stuck with audio guides when our smartphones can take us to a friend’s living room on the other side of the world.
Think about it. When you are standing in an art museum, people are pulling out their smartphones to take pictures. Those smartphones are to an audio guide what a horse drawn carriage is to a car.
So, why not use it?
"Augmented reality can bring a picture to life, allowing it to tell its own story and allowing you to join the conversation."
The Promise of Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is possible with the same device you take selfies with. You can point your phone’s camera at objects in the world and bring them to life, like a magician creating an army of brooms. That’s the power of augmented reality, and it’s the exact thing audio guides fail to do — bring magic into the art museum.
Advances in augmented reality present a new horizon of possibilities. Something as ubiquitous as our smartphones can add new ways of seeing, interacting, and participating in the world. In a time like this, the audio guide can never be enough.
Augmented reality can bring a painting to life, allow it to tell its own story and allow you to join the conversation. It can help museums, artists, and art lovers all at the same time. If we could merge augmented reality with art, we could transform the experience of creating, presenting, and enjoying.
That’s what Artivive is doing. By partnering with museums and artists, we are opening up the art world to the power of augmented reality.
Artivive in Action
Our Artivive app turns your smartphone into a portal, leading museum goers into a universe where paintings speak, move, and, most importantly, tell their own story.
The Albertina Museum uses Artivive to explain the biographies of the artists, the history of their artworks, and the process of their painting. Visitors are now able to go inside the paintings. Sound interesting? You can try it yourself here. Just install our free app and point them at the images — and experience what augmented reality can bring to art.
One example from the Albertina is Marc Chagall’s tremendous work The Kite (1926). When seen through Artivive, it now shimmers and awakens from its slumber, pulling in for close ups on detail while Chagall’s influences are narrated over the scene. Through the window of the smartphone screen, the works of masters become living objects.
At Belvedere Museum, Artivive reveals the paintings underneath the painting you see before you. The hidden world of do-overs is brought to life in a kind of real time, sci-fi archaeology of the artwork.
"Artists are now using the Artivive app to expand their work into the virtual world."
Artivive can bring all the relevant information of biography and art history to classic works, ensuring that they will continue to find audiences in the future. And we can use that same technology moving forward, bringing augmented reality into the creative process.
Artists are now using the Artivive app to extend their work into the virtual. Alexander Kluge brought out entire new dimensions to his pieces by integrating Artivive into his show. This is a new way to make art: bringing the digital and the analog together.
For more examples of all the amazing Artivive projects, check out our YouTube channel and watch as artists and museums explore all the possibilities.
With Artivive, what would take an audio guide several minutes to present is now available in seconds.Users can walk into an exhibition with no prior knowledge or understanding of the art they are about to see, and augmented reality can bring them the insight and sensitivity to history needed to fully appreciate the piece.
With a greater understanding of what they are seeing, users can go deeper in their own observations, adding their thoughts to the greater conversation. And the viewer, museum, and artist can interact inside this virtual space.
It brings us close to paintings from the distant past, and it adds a fourth dimension to new artwork. I think this might be the important update that the art world needs as it moves forward into the century.
"Art museums have suffered a lot because of their past. Although most curators want to make their museum a place for all kinds of people, the hardest part is attracting newcomers. ''
Augmented Reality and the Art Museum of the Future
Augmented reality is proving to be a powerful new tool for museums and galleries to update and transform the art world. It’s an opportunity for profound changes that have been needed for a long time. Museums can finally overcome their old image as pretentious institutions for the few. They can bring in more young people and first time visitors, creating art lovers who will go on to live richer, more deeply felt lives.
Art museums have long suffered from their stuffy past. While most curators want to make their museum a place for people of all walks of life, it’s hard to get newcomers through the door. The longer they wait to change their image, the more young people grow up thinking art just isn’t for them, and the more members of their community will go on feeling excluded from the whole thing. We can’t let that happen because art is for everybody.
Given the current moment, a reinvention of the art museum couldn’t come at a more important time.
"The first challenge is to bring art lovers back from the local community."
The COVID-19 pandemic has closed down all the public spaces we used to share, not least the art museums. Part of everyone’s responsibility right now is to limit the spread of the virus, which usually means closing doors and waiting out the pandemic.
But there will come a time when the doors will open once again.
The first challenge is bringing back art lovers from the local community. They have seen the collections, and they want a reason to return. Augmented reality is a great way to revitalize long standing pieces as well as introduce new ones. It’s an opportunity to re-engage people in their lifelong pursuit of art appreciation.
"The local community is particularly important, as tourism, a very important source of museum visitors, will need a long time to fully recover."
But augmented reality can also bring in all members from the local community, those people I talked about earlier who think art isn’t for them. It’ll be a novelty at first, but once people experience the museum in this new way, it will be something much more profound than that. It will be their gateway to art.
The local community is especially important as tourism, a leading source of museum visitors, will take a long time to recover. Even after the lockdowns ease and life returns to something resembling normal, tourists are not likely to come flocking back anytime soon. The risks of plane travel and exposure to new places will likely deter many tourists. Meanwhile, international travel of any kind is likely to remain limited until we find a vaccine.
That means museums cannot rely on tourists coming to their city for the foreseeable future. They have to turn to their local community and give them a reason to come back or come for the first time. I believe augmented reality can be the key to that campaign.
And not only is it the most promising way to update art museums, it’s also the easiest to integrate.
''Tomorrow, the Degas might talk about the development of the artist’s technique. Two experiences, one painting.''
The Reality of Augmented Reality
Augmented reality doesn’t require any special equipment or major, expensive upgrades. Almost everyone walking in the door brings the equipment with them in their pocket. All the museum needs to do is direct visitors to the free Artivive app.
Exhibitions don’t need to be moved around or completely reimagined for augmented reality to work. It can be brought in alongside what is already there, adding new depth and breadth to the collection the museum has already invested in.
Once put into place, augmented reality experiences can be easily changed. Today, the Degas might talk about the artist’s obsessive focus on drawing ballerinas. Tomorrow, the Degas might talk about the development of the artist’s technique. Two experiences, one painting.
The content is also easy to expand and update with new information or adapted to make connections to a traveling exhibit on display on the other side of the museum.
"Objects and souvenirs can now contain images that interact with Artivive, adding more value to products."
What’s more, communities can participate in the content. Augmented reality makes a long term discussion about art possible between thousands of visitors, with commentary and thoughts, even jokes, added into the experience. This allows the community to join the museum in the presentation, taking part in the process — giving them a sense of ownership and pride in the institution.
These interactions help museums get a clearer understanding of how their communities react to the pieces. That data can be used to bring in art that is more relevant and desired by patrons, and it can highlight new ways to use the technology.
And, of course, we can’t ignore the opportunities augmented reality opens up for the gift shop. Merchandise can now contain images that interact with Artivive, adding value to products. The more merchandise sold at the gift shop, the stronger the museum.
"Augmented reality is an easy way to bring the art museum into the 21st century."
But perhaps the most important part of augmented reality is that it doesn’t replace the museum as a common area that we all share. So much of technological innovation of late has led to people staying home, well before the pandemic started. Streaming video, social media, online gaming, digital workspaces, and meal planning services make leaving the house almost unnecessary. Good in quarantine, yes. But for the rest of our lives?
We need these new technologies to bring us back into public spaces, not keep us at home. Virtual tours of the Sistine Chapel and the Louvre are great for those who can’t visit, but they can never replace visiting the real thing.
Augmented reality encourages us to get off of the couch and immerse ourselves in the world. To use it at an art museum, one goes to the art museum. It isn’t passive or pacifying. It’s active and empowering.
Augmented reality is a limber, inexpensive way to bring the art museum into the 21st century. And art museums need to change in order to survive and grow. The time is right and the tech is here.
''That ability to create stronger bonds between the viewer and the artwork cuts through this bad idea that art is elitist.''
The Importance of Bringing Art Back
We are all searching for the beauty, stimulation, and meaning that only art can give us. Art confronts big problems and let’s us look at the world in ways we never have. It brings us closer, not just with the people we come to the gallery with or the artist who painted the piece. Art actually brings us closer to humanity as a whole.
And I’m so proud that Artivive is something that brings art into people’s lives. Users are able to understand and emotionally bond with artwork in a deeper way through augmented reality.
That ability to create stronger bonds between the viewer and the artwork cuts through this bad idea that art is elitist. Art can never be elitist because it relies on the one thing every person shares no matter who they are, what education they’ve received, what struggles they’ve fought through, or what challenges they have ahead of them. Art is about our humanity, and that we have in equal share.
„Art affirms life, and we could all use a lot of that.”
That’s why I think there’s no better way to return from this pandemic than to embrace art. Art affirms life, and we could all use a lot of that. We want to be part of the new art landscape by opening up a new way to see it.
That means we need a new kind of museum experience, and we need new art. Luckily, creators and artists are always reaching out to galleries and museums in their community. They want to share their work with the world, and they want access to all the new ways to do it. And Artivive wants to help them gain access to the exciting new frontier of augmented reality.
And so, Artivive is organizing open calls for content with several institutions around the world. I’m constantly amazed by how many submissions we get — there really is no lack of talent today, no shortage of voices worthy of being heard.
''We are working hard to connect people to this frontier and play our part in keeping art alive and well in this century and many more to come.''
Tomorrow’s Art in the 21st Century Museum
With more and more art being made to take advantage of augmented reality, the art world is stepping out into the future. This is a future where viewers can interact with the artwork, where artists can expand their work into a limitless digital space, where museums can bring the classics into living, breathing color.
Artivive is creating the conditions to make these things real, using one of the most common forms of technology — the smartphone. We are working hard to connect people to this frontier and play our part in keeping art alive and well in this century and many more to come.
An exciting time is coming for art. And that is something to look forward to right now. But it will take all of us coming together. Artists, gallerists, curators, and art lovers will all have a part to play in shaping the coming era.
Interested in joining us in making the future of art? Register here for the next online workshop and get started in augmented reality.
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