3 Ways Museums Can Benefit From AR Usage
Museums have the ability to show more than what is on their walls and websites. They can now begin offering Augmented Reality experiences with the average visit.
For many people, who live around museums, the museum has become a normal part of life. When people don’t know where to go, they might visit a museum and go get some lunch, even if they’ve seen most of the artwork already, excluding the seasonal exhibits. This may cause a lack of visits from the average customer. This is why it’s important to include both seasonal exhibits and exciting immersive experiences. With the new stimulus package including aid for museums, this may be a critical chance to dramatically improve your visits. Augmented reality is the perfect innovative and exciting addition to your museum’s infrastructure. And here’s why.
1. Enhance Popular Exhibits and Pieces
Chances are, if a visitor is checking out a museum more than once, they loved the experience and they loved the art and/or history. Giving visitors a chance to learn more about the art they love, and even the building they love can build a solid relationship between the institution and their visitors. Often, museums will have events with discussions with the artists’, but with Covid-19 and social-distancing guidelines, these have severely decreased and may not increase for quite some time.
By having an app with AR capabilities, the visitor just has to be there and scan the art with their phone to learn more about the piece. This technology is currently being used at the New England Air Museum — the largest aviation museum in New England — to add excitement and knowledge to their walls and real planes. The artist themselves can pop up on the device in AR and begin speaking about their piece. This creates not only an immersive experience for the visitor, but an educational one. Augmented reality learning has already been seen as an effective way to learn, especially for children. Now is the time to take advantage of that and take museum visits to the next level.
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2. Diversifying the Collection
Aside from the benefit of using AR as an enhancement to the current establishment, there’s also the benefit of beginning to acquire a more diverse collection of art. Technology has, of course, been around for decades, and with that new art has been created with that in mind. Digital art has recently hit and upswing with recent news being about a digital art piece being sold at a whopping 69 million dollars. This shows an obvious interest in art as a digital experience as well as a physical one. Augmented Reality can work as a natural bridge between these.
Artists have set out to start making art that can be experienced both physically and digitally, and they do this with augmented reality. By having an app with AR capabilities already available to visitors, this implementation would be much easier and can open doors for an establishment to showcase more diverse and ‘futuristic’ works. Many museums already have projector rooms where they may show video-based pieces. This would just be the next step and would surely delight new customers.
3. AR + Audio Tours
Audio tours are already pretty much the norm at many museums. Adding augmented reality would just be a major step up. Many museums with audio tours have mobile apps already too, for those not interested in using the devices offered. These apps can simply be expanded and improved on with augmented reality capabilities. Many companies that offer AR services, like ARSOME Technology (arsome.com), also offer check-ups and revisions over time as part of the contracts. This would make it easier to add, remove, and change exhibition information especially when considering mixed media digital pieces. An app can include mostly the audio tour, with simple directions to point their phone at a piece when there is an AR component.
This would make for a spectacularly immersive experience that keeps the visitor wondering what else the museum has to offer. That feeling of excitement is something museums hope to entice in their visitors, and with AR, that possibility is multiplied. This experience can also be at a slight upcharge to generate even more income for museums. For both new adventurous visitors and old invested and interested visitors, AR would add value to the visitor experience.
Museums and other educational institutions have been dealt a huge blow by the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 into 2021. As many are finding ways to recover, new technologies are being looked to as possible solutions to their problems. With social distancing still in mind and simply the “touching things less” attitude, it may feel impossible to make museums immersive again, but this is not true. With augmented reality, enhancing these spaces has never been easier. The steps are there, these institutions just need to take them.
Looking to add AR to the museum experience? Contact ARSOME Technology today.
ARSOME Technology is an Augmented & Virtual Reality company based in Manchester, Connecticut. ARSOME Technology is a highly established and driven company that works for and with companies interested in bringing an AR, VR, or Mixed Reality experience to their businesses. ARSOME Technology has worked with a museum in the past to bring characters and information to life. Contact us at ARSOME.com to learn more.
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