A landscape of a villa that changes under a sudden rain or a woman who stops being a motionless figure to tell her sorrows are some of the surprises of the first Augmented Museum of Uruguay, where virtual reality and volumetric projection transform the experience of appreciating art.
The museum is located in the heart of the city of San José de Mayo, in the Treinta y Tres Square, next to the well-known Bartolomé Macció Theater and opposite the Cathedral Basilica.
It was inaugurated in October during the tenth edition of the fair for the promotion of reading and books in San José and a month later it opened its doors thanks to the efforts of the municipality and the audiovisual production company Campo de Marte.
"I told the mayor that it had to be something that had to do with new technologies to be more engaging, more educational, to generate more public and that in turn people could identify with the character," Juan Carlos Barreto, San José's general director of culture, told Cromo. That idea led to the use of augmented reality.
The first Augmented Museum of Uruguay gathers the work of the painter and sculptor Hugo Nantes. The exhibition has a 180° video that pretends to be "a time capsule" through the mapping technique, that is to say, the volumetric projection on the surfaces of the place.
The film that will be shown interweaves passages of the artist's life with stories that happened in San José, in Uruguay and in the world between 1930 and 2010, a year after his death.
But when augmented reality appears in the room, the art literally comes to life. Projected on the walls of what used to be the vault of a bank that went bankrupt in 2002 and was later bought by the departmental government, you can see different life-size paintings of Nantes. That's when the magic begins.
Through the use of a tablet, visitors can interact with the works. Thanks to the technology developed by the Campo de Marte team, they can experience the interaction with the characters, who tell the viewer the history and characteristics of the painting.
For example, in Cholas at the station, the characters tell the viewer who they are and where they live. To create a more realistic atmosphere, the audio was produced by a Bolivian woman.
In Doña Albina en la cama the objects move and the figure interacts with the public. In Quinta de Freire, the augmented reality software generates a copious rainfall in the landscape.
The experience is unique: while you look at the original still painting on the wall, you enjoy the animation on a tablet.
"People see it, enjoy it, learn from it and want to see it again," Barreto said.
In addition to the development work in which more than 30 people participated, the team talked to Hugo Nantes' family, friends, neighbors, collectors and collected information from newspapers, magazines and videos.
Although the museum is new, its creators are already thinking about improving and perfecting it. The central aspiration of the cultural space San José is to create its own application for mobile devices.
And, in this way, offer the public more freedom when it comes to enjoying the works. In addition, we want to expand the collection with works by Paco Espínola, Wenceslao Varela or Francisco Canaro, "artists who contributed not only to the culture of San José but to that of the country in general," said the director of culture. And he added: "We want to reinforce and implement new and better technology to the current project".
Source: Chrome
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