Mobile apps and connected devices are transforming all types of events, and now that technology is even bringing interactivity to the way people experience museum exhibits. Visitors to the Phillips Collection’s exhibit "Gauguin to Picasso: Masterworks From Switzerland" can turn their selfies into virtual masterpieces using a new app from Switzerland-based Appamics. Guests take a selfie in the app, and then as they approach one of four paintings that are connected to iBeacons, the app animates their selfie into the style of that artist, such as Marc Chagall or Édouard Manet.
“The idea is not to take away from the exhibition but to be another point to make it even more interesting,” said Oliver Schwendemann, co-founder of Appamics. "It’s a very automatic and miraculous change when you approach the painting. You see how your selfie transforms, but it’s just a touch of the painting. And it will always be different depending on your photo that you’ve taken." The museum commissioned the app in partnership with the Embassy of Switzerland and Basel Tourism, the Swiss city’s marketing agency.
Once guests have visited all four of the connected pieces in the exhibit, they enter a lounge where beacons detect the app and automatically display their four animated selfies on a large screen. “It’s as if you are part of the exhibition,” Schwendemann said. Users can also share their transformed selfies on social media.
Appamics can apply its technology platform, known as Pharos, to a variety of events, to create educational or entertaining experiences on the attendees’ devices that are tied to the products or information they are seeing in person. In addition to stationary beacons that communicate with an app, like those used at the Phillips Collection, the company is also developing solutions based on beacons worn on a guest’s wrist like a watch, so experiences are triggered as the guest moves around an exhibit booth or event.
“Our Internet of Things platform, Pharos, opens up an entire range of possibilities to engage with event attendees, using beacons as well as geofencing and other technologies,” Schwendemann said. "Event attendees can experience exhibit, products, and services in a playful and educational way."
