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Musing: Interactive Didactics for Art Museums and Galleries via Image Processing and Augmented Reality

Authors:
Atkinson Gentry
Kevin Whiteside
Dan Tamir
Grayson Lawrence
Mary Mikel Stump

Keywords: interactive didactic; museum didactic; virtual meseum; image recognition; augmented reality

Abstract:
Textual didactics, used in museums and galleries, provide access to historical, socio-political, technical, and biographic information about exhibited artworks and artists. These types of didactics are considered to be cost-effective. However, they do not enable the use of audio, video, and Web interface that allow for multiple forms of usage for the museum visitors. We have developed a smartphone application, called Musing, for interaction of museum visitors with informational content and enhancement of their museum experience. Musing is an augmented reality (AR) application that enables the visitor to capture an artwork with a smartphone camera. Using image processing, the application recognizes the artwork and places graphical user interface objects in the form of Points Of Interest (POIs) onto the image of the artwork displayed on-screen. These POIs provide the visitor with additional didactic information in the form of text overlays, audio, video, and/or Web sites. The Musing application, described in this paper, is designed with several performance and efficiency goals, including high reliability and recognition rate, high usability, and significant flexibility. The application is designed to be adaptable to a variety of museums and galleries without requiring special hardware or software. Furthermore, an administrative interface enables museum staff to provide content for the didactic purposes without requiring software development skills.

Pages: 30 to 38

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: May 25, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4162

ISBN: 978-1-61208-342-1

Location: Venice, Italy

Dates: from May 25, 2014 to May 29, 2014