We are now in the second Impact Accelerator Account-funded phase of the Beyond the Visual: Augmented Realities project and working on a commercially viable app that supplies additional layers of information to the traditional gallery or museum space via handheld devices.
This creates a multi-sensorial experience for audiences; in live trials, visitors could, for example, hold up their tablets in front of a portrait of a violinist and music that the artist had performed or composed would begin to play in the visitors’ headphones.
Rather than taking a linear tour around an exhibition, additional content can be triggered by a visitor’s position, thanks to software that tracks their progress.
Galleries will be able to see how long people dwell on particular paintings and how they move around the space.
This information could influence decisions about gallery layout and content, and even about what stock to keep in the gift shop.
Other opportunities include a more personal approach to community heritage. Local people – rather than a curator – could read oral histories, for example.
Digital giving could also be transformed. Through Augmented Realities – a collaboration with Helen Treharne, Matthew Casey and Chris Culnane from the department of computing and with external partners Visit Surrey, Watts Gallery and The Lightbox – visitors could use their mobile devices to instantly support funding for individual works of art or causes that the gallery is supporting.
Similarly, if they admire a certain picture, they could press “like” and buy something associated with it from the virtual gift shop there and then.
Caroline Scarles is a senior lecturer in tourism at the University of Surrey, Guildford
This creates a multi-sensorial experience for audiences; in live trials, visitors could, for example, hold up their tablets in front of a portrait of a violinist and music that the artist had performed or composed would begin to play in the visitors’ headphones.
Rather than taking a linear tour around an exhibition, additional content can be triggered by a visitor’s position, thanks to software that tracks their progress.
Galleries will be able to see how long people dwell on particular paintings and how they move around the space.
This information could influence decisions about gallery layout and content, and even about what stock to keep in the gift shop.
Other opportunities include a more personal approach to community heritage. Local people – rather than a curator – could read oral histories, for example.
Digital giving could also be transformed. Through Augmented Realities – a collaboration with Helen Treharne, Matthew Casey and Chris Culnane from the department of computing and with external partners Visit Surrey, Watts Gallery and The Lightbox – visitors could use their mobile devices to instantly support funding for individual works of art or causes that the gallery is supporting.
Similarly, if they admire a certain picture, they could press “like” and buy something associated with it from the virtual gift shop there and then.
Caroline Scarles is a senior lecturer in tourism at the University of Surrey, Guildford
