With the addition of the full AR app, MUSE is offering visitors an experience that harmonizes perfectly with their innovative spirit – in total fluidity and transparency.

A Fascinating Content

The app has what it takes to please even the most directionally-challenged of us. The days of losing your way in exhibitions are over: with Go!Muse visitors can see their precise location on each of the six floors of the museum, and are guided in Augmented Reality toward the object of their interest.

As for the educational content, the app includes over one hundred AR hotspots that can be activated by the visitor to unlock multimedia content (text, videos and more) that provides additional context for the various attractions.

Last but not least, the app makes it possible to view realistic virtual portrayals of ten dinosaurs and a whale by adding life-size animated bodies to their skeletons in Augmented Reality, right in the middle of the museum.

An Emotional Experience

On the day of the launch, over one thousand visitors came with their families to check out the new app. It was the ideal opportunity to confirm that the app would be as magical as we had hoped. It was touching to see children, parents and grandparents equally surprised and enthralled by the illusion of a partially-digital reality. No matter their age, every visitor had the happy face of a child thrilled by an amusement park or magic show.

A Synergy of Multiple Talents

The obvious joy of the visitors made me proud of the work our team had accomplished. This project took no less than six months to complete and incorporated the work of at least a dozen individuals: an illustrator, a designer, a 3D animator, a game developer, front and back-end developers, a project lead and a program manager. The synergy of all these talents makes it clear that our field has changed. Cultural mediation is no longer about making a connection between historical and scientific facts, or simply coming up with a captivating narrative. It is also about creating an unforgettable emotional experience for every type of visitor.

To meet this objective, we collaborated with MUSE’s digital department. Fabio Manucci, the paleontologist of the museum, worked closely with Davide Bonadona, an illustrator celebrated for his work on dinosaurs, to create a scientifically accurate portrayal of each specimen.

From a scientific point of view, there is always a risk when you attempt to bring to life creatures that have been extinct for millions of years. But museums also have a responsibility to provide accurate representations of dinosaurs, in contrast to the fantastical portrayals in cinema and video games.

We then made it possible for these virtual animals to come to life inside the museum. Each 3D model was superimposed on its actual skeleton to within a centimeter of precision using GuidiGO AR Composer.

Seeing these dinosaurs in the flesh – and not just as bones – is impressive enough. But watching them move before your eyes makes the experience even more stunning. Since the skeletons themselves obviously remain static, we had to find a way to suspend disbelief when the animals are in motion. To do so, we added a Virtual Reality mode that hides the skeleton when the dinosaur begins to move.

A Large-Scale Experience

With the launch of Go!Muse, MUSE has become the first museum of Science in the world to offer an Augmented Reality experience at this scale, with ten animated dinosaurs and a whale as part of their permanent collection, and 80 AR-compatible tablets available to visitors.

MUSE official video trailer

While the app is designed for a wide range of users of all ages, it is sure to capture the imagination of young visitors most of all, due to their interest in novelties and interactivity.

Since they’ve been immersed in the digital world from birth, the younger generations are already used to learning and discovering outside of the traditional learning environments of libraries and museums. Touchscreens are already part of their daily lives. Virtual Reality headsets are soon to follow, and any museum planning for the future should be aware of that fact. It is essential for cultural institutions to pursue immersive, innovative technologies if they want to form lasting ties with the adults of tomorrow.

Experiences like this one will help young ones to discover the magic of museums and the joy of interacting with works of art and science along with other visitors.

The use of augmented reality paintings in this exhibition is a creative solution to the fact that most of the selected virtual artworks would have been difficult, if not impossible, to borrow. Works by da Vinci and de Kooning are thus accessible in the galleries, as digital facsimiles.

Unlike traditional digital tours, this augmented reality experience doesn’t provide interpretation material about the artworks on display. Rather, the digital content is an integral part of the exhibition itself. The augmented reality assets become museum objects in their own right.

The Visitor Experience

The digital aspect of the exhibition experience is integrated simply and effectively into the visit. Prior to entering the galleries, visitors are equipped with Lenovo Phab 2 Pro devices. As they walk through the exhibition, which is spread out over the nine galleries of the Museum, they are notified about the presence of virtual artworks by a message on their devices.

Visitors are free to explore the galleries, finding the virtual artworks and comparing them to the physical ones. What is so unique about this experience is that the physical setting was designed with the digital components in mind right from the get go: there are blank spaces on the gallery walls with a text that lets visitors know that virtual works will appear when they look through their tablets. These walls are only populated when the virtual artworks are displayed in AR in real size. No markers, iBeacons, or WIFI are needed as the devices recognize the space using Google’s VPS (Visual Positioning Service) announced at Google I/O in May.

The high resolution digital reproductions allow visitors to explore the virtual paintings, discovering the vibrant details of texture and color, as if the paintings were physically in the gallery. Visitors can get extremely close to these virtual works (closer than would be allowed with real paintings), examining Van Gogh’s bold brushstrokes or Rauschenberg’s monochromatic topographies.

How the AR Experience Was Created

The creation of the digital component of the experience involved a collaboration between the Museum and GuidiGO to create high resolution 3D models of different paintings to be virtually hung on the gallery walls.

Google’s augmented reality team came to set up the VPS (Visual Positioning Service) by mapping the galleries. This allows the devices to recognize where they are in the museum space, which makes possible the placement and display of virtual objects. The Clyfford Still Museum is among the first 10 museums in the world to have embraced VPS technology to enable accurately prepositioned, life-size AR experiences.

After this step, GuidiGO’s team came on-site to place the virtual paintings on the walls using GuidiGO’s AR Composer, an application we developed to manipulate 3D objects and place them in mapped spaces. In the Clyfford Still Museum, this meant hanging the virtual paintings so they fit perfectly with the real artworks on the walls.

GuidiGO’s AR Composer was also used to delineate the museum space into unique sections. This step made it so that when visitors are in a gallery, they only see the artworks on display in that gallery. This avoids the artworks of the galleries nearby being visible “through the walls” due to the occlusion effect, as virtual objects will always appear in front of real objects on the screen.

The result is a seamless experience where visitors are engaged in a new kind of visit in which real and virtual complement each other. AR becomes social when groups of visitors see the same thing at the same time, sparking interesting dialogues and shared ‘wow’ moments.

The exhibition “Still & Art” is generously supported in part by Daniel Benel and Lena Fishman. Additional support is provided by U.S. Bank and the citizens who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). The augmented reality experience is made possible at the Clyfford Still Museum through a partnership with Google and media company RYOT.

© Featured Image courtesy Clyfford Still Museum

Lumin content was created by the DIA’s interpretive team leveraging GuidiGO’s augmented reality platform, AR Composer, built specifically for Tango. A pilot of the device took place January –April 2017. During the pilot evaluators conducted user testing and observations. Below are some of the results.

Visitor responses are taken from Lumin Short Survey Card (n=442) and Lumin Online Survey (n=110).

Singapore’s oldest museum now allows its visitors to experience the building through an enhanced architectural tour. It tells the story of the building’s long history and its transformation from a Natural History Museum to the most significant historical museum of Singapore.

Visitors are given a Tango-compatible Lenovo Phab 2 Pro device, which will transport them back in time and enable them to see the architectural evolution of the building, how it looked like over a century ago and onwards, and the artefacts that used to be displayed in it. The digital tour, led by volunteer guides, evokes the museum’s imagery in a way that helps visitors obtain deeper understanding of its contents.

There are currently six tour stops that incorporate a range of AR experiences, such as:

The Building’s Evolution

The evolution of a 130-year-old building is bound to be an interesting one. Combining Tango technology’s ability to both augment and recreate reality, visitors are able to see the replica of the museum’s transformation throughout the decades.

The Museum’s Rotunda

The old rotunda used to display a natural history collection, as well as a marble bust of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. Through the lens of their device, visitors can walk around a life-size model of the room, surrounded with the original artefacts that once graced it, and see the clay tiles instead of the current marble flooring.

The Indian Fin Whale

This iconic 42-feet-long skeleton used to be displayed in the museum in the early 1900s, until it was returned to Malaysia in the 1970s. Thanks to Tango technology, visitors can once again see its fossil under the glass passage on the second floor, where it once stood. However, that’s not all – they can also witness the reimagining of how it looked and sounded like while it was still alive.

Lumin content was created by the DIA’s interpretive team leveraging GuidiGO’s new augmented reality platform, AR Composer, built specifically for Tango. This allows the user to interact with real size 3D animations, information and display directions in the visitor’s field of view.

Lumin connects visitors with artworks in a global context beyond the DIA,” said Salvador Salort-Pons, DIA director. “Augmented reality allows the user to see the unseen, imagine art in its original setting and understand how objects were used and experienced in people’s everyday lives. It is an exciting way to incorporate the latest technology into the visitor experience.

Visitors will hold a Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, the first Tango enabled phone, to explore different works of art. The initial phase of the project includes seven tour stops with a variety of AR experiences, including:

A Mummy, from Ancient Egypt

Mummies give us insights into ancient burial rituals. With the app’s AR overlay, you can peer beneath the sarcophagus and even the mummies’ bandages to explore an X-ray-like view of the skeleton.

The Ishtar Gate, from Ancient Babylonia

The Ishtar Gate once stood six stories high. Now, with the power of Tango’s motion tracking technology, you can explore the gate at scale, walk under its arch, and see where the Detroit Institute of Art’s 3×4-foot mosaic piece fits into this architectural wonder.

A limestone Relief, from Mesopotamia

The limestone relief was originally painted with vibrant colors, which have long since faded. By looking through your Tango enable device, you can tap on the relief to see what it would have looked like when it was first created thousands of years ago.

A Cylinder Seal, from Mesopotamia

Small round cylinder seals were once used to make impressions on clay for items like jewelry and signatures for administrative purposes. Now, instead of just seeing the seals in a case, you can roll the seals in AR to see the written characters and figurative scenes that they create.

WANT TO SEE LUMIN IN ACTION? CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEOS.

This is just the beginning of how you’ll be able to use Tango in museums to see more, hear more and learn more – in other words, to experience museums around the world in a whole new way.

“Lumin” in the Press:

• Hyperallergic: More Screens, More Knowledge: Testing the Detroit Institute of Arts’ New Augmented Reality App >>
• Fortune: Google Wants To Give Museum Visitors A Pokémon Go-Like Experience >>
• Venture Beat: Google opens Tango augmented reality platform to museums, starting with Detroit Institute of Arts >>
• The News Herald: Augmented reality adds dimension to art at DIA >>
• The Economist: Futurism: museums and technology >>
• Geek: Detroit Institute of Arts Enriches Museum Experience with Google Tango >>
• Tom’s Hardware: Google’s Project Tango Heads To The Detroit Institute Of Arts >>
• CNET: Google’s project Tango AR lets museum visitors delve deeper >>
• Tech Crunch: A Detroit art museum is leveraging Google Tango for an AR history lesson >>

The RMN-Grand Palais won first place in the “Virtual and Augmented Reality/Immersion” category for their exhibition entitled “Sites Eternels“ (Eternal Sites). We are particularly pleased with this news as GuidiGO created the Tango app used for this exhibition in collaboration with the Google Cultural Institute.

Using 3D images from the startup Iconem, the app we developed allowed visitors to explore a reproduction of the ancient city of Palmyra in augmented reality on Tango tablets, and to witness the destruction of its arch piece by piece, along with a simulation of its reconstruction.

This world premiere of the augmented reality experience with Google Tango was offered for free to the Grand Palais visitors, highlighting the latest technological advancements and applying them to the preservation and dissemination of our cultural heritage.

GuidiGO AR Composer opens up incredible new opportunities for museums and cultural sites, as they can now design their own AR experiences in just a few simple steps, and make them available on site or for remote use by schools and other educational institutions.

Unlike virtual reality, Augmented Reality is not designed to immerse you in an entirely different environment” says GuidiGO CEO David Lerman, “AR integrates virtual elements into the real environment, and allows you to interact with them as you move around. You can physically feel the presence of AR objects, particularly when they appear in real size. The applications for Augmented Reality are actually quite different from virtual reality, but no less fascinating and engaging for users. Just look at the excitement around Pokémon GO!

This is a great opportunity to reach an even wider audience, including the digital generation, who are looking for new experiences. AR Composer is also an extraordinary educational tool capable of engaging different types of visitors as they explore permanent collections or temporary exhibitions.

GuidiGO AR Composer: How does it work?

GuidiGO AR Composer makes it possible to create experiences in augmented reality using virtual components. The Tango tablet works as a viewfinder to position virtual objects on the ground or anywhere else, with no need for markers or signals of any kind. The settings and location of the virtual objects are saved as soon as they are placed. They are then visible to visitors just like any real object.

A virtual 3D object can be static, animated, or interactive. It can be a character, an entire scene, a sound, or a visual hotspot, depending on the experience created by the museum.

GuidiGO AR Composer makes full use of Tango capabilities, including motion tracking, which enables virtual objects to behave as if they were real. For example, virtual objects increase in size as you approach them, and you can walk around them to get a closer look from any angle. It is also possible to interact with them, as you can see in this video where a dinosaur roars when the visitor approaches.

Ready-to-Go AR Plugins

Just like GuidiGO Studio, AR Composer is extremely user-friendly and doesn’t require special skills or training. Using presets or custom plugins, museums and cultural sites can quickly create a variety of experiences in which their visitors will see the real and virtual blend together seamlessly. For example, museums will be able to:

• Geolocate and guide visitors using a virtual path that appears at their feet:
  
• Leave comments about a place, or work of art, using AR hotspots:
  
• Create a Pokémon GO-style treasure hunt, inviting visitors to explore and collect virtual objects they find in the galleries:
  
• Share works that are missing from the collection, whether they are on reserve, being restored, or on loan… or simply too fragile or too large to be displayed in public,
• Place a work in its original context – for example, making an entire temple appear where only an ancient column remains,
• Compare a work to its previous version, or to the artist’s preliminary sketches,
• Take complex mechanisms apart and put them back together again to see how things work, whether it’s a machine, a process, the human body, the solar system, etc.
• Make virtual characters move around in front of the visitor,
• Recreate the décor and atmosphere of an entire room by superimposing its former or future state on top of its current reality:
  

And any other applications imaginable…

First Tango Smartphones Available

The Phab2 Pro, the first smartphone to feature Tango technology, is available at the Lenovo shop.

This new type of smartphone is the first step in a major technological breakthrough. Tango makes it finally possible to create AR experiences without using markers or any kind of infrastructure. In other words, there’s finally a mobile device that sees like we do.