INDE's Augmented Reality Experience "Resurrected" Rembrandt, Monet, and van Gogh

Published: September 16, 2019

How is it that visitors of Patchings Art Centre in Calverton, Nottinghamshire are now guided by none other than Rembrandt, Turner, Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Richard Parkes Bonington? These famous artists have been "resurrected" by UK company INDE through a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) application that lets them talk about their art, and also allows them to share some unique experiences along the way.

The AR content appears on the user’s screen once they point their mobile devices at one of the 19 markers on the floor - as each marker "triggers" a 3D content with one of the artists. In these clips, artists talk about their style of art and introduce their place in history. Meanwhile, visitors can hunt the pieces of a jigsaw of a famous painting in the landscape. Once found these pieces can be re-arranged to make the picture complete.

The application also has a feature that allows users to convert their own photograph to the style of a well-known artist. They have utilized a neural-style transfer algorithm to transform arbitrary photos into a given artistic style. Five machine learning models have been trained to compare the similarity between the content and style of photographs and paintings, allowing us to repaint users' photos.

Although INDE is known for its large screen Augmented Reality experiences, they also developed a platform that operates on iOS and Android smartphones, tablets and wearable devices to create Augmented Reality experiences straight out of the box: "We are in a time of technological transition in which creating augmented reality experiences on mobile devices is being easier for developers. This allows us to delve into improving and understanding the best experience for the end-user and at the same time prepare for a future when the entire world will become an enabled landscape for augmented information and spatial collaboration." explained Xava Fragoso, INDE's CDO.

Patchings Art Centre isn't the first museum that chooses INDE to increase attendance numbers and engagement: they have deployed large-screen Augmented Reality installations for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Florida Museum of Natural History, Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology, Putnam Museum, W5 Interactive Discovery Centre and many more.