Augmented Reality for Cultural Institutions

AUGMENTED REALITY FOR CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS Written by: Foteini Valeonti (ID: 95461809) Contact: [email protected] 0030 6978201863

0044 7552760383 Date: September 2010 Supervisor: Dr. Mark Ingham Course: MA Interactive Digital Media Ravensbourne College 2009-2010 London, UK

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ABSTRACT This is a report for the project The Augmented Reality Suite for Cultural Institutions [ARS:CI] and its accompanying research. ARS:CI is a software suite comprising of three Apple iPhone applications that take advantage of Augmented Reality to enhance the learning experience in the museum context. The potential of Augmented Reality for cultural heritage institutions has been the subject of research for over a decade, however ARS:CI is one of the first projects, which aims at the development of an Augmented Reality solution for museums and galleries that does not include custom-made or expensive hardware, such as Ultra-PCs, but instead takes advantage of the smartphones on the market. The research methods followed were mainly desktop research as well as interviews with professionals coming from the cultural heritage sector. During the software development process user-testing was involved to retrieve feedback from the users, combined with desktop research on techniques that would optimise the performance of the applications. The study proved that despite the large amount of research in the area of augmented reality for museums, there is only a minority of sustainable solutions, which was eventually appropriated for permanent exhibitions, mainly because of the cost of purchasing and maintaining the designed Augmented Reality systems. The feedback ARS:CI received was positive and professionals with a background in the Cultural Heritage sector as well as Augmented Reality specialists, found in it great potential, as a tool that is able to transform the learning process in a compelling experience. Keywords Augmented Reality, Learning, Museum, Cultural Heritage, Mobile, Apple iPhone

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CONTENTS Abstract 2 Keywords 2 Introduction 4 How to Read 5 Methodology 5 Personal Motivation 6 The ARS:CI 7 Description of the ARS:CI 7 Application 1: Authart 8 Description 8 Audience 8 Importance 9 Application 2: Unscene 9 Description 9 Audience 9 Importance 10 Application 3: Artour 10 Description 10 Audience 11 Importance 11 Recapitulation 12 Augmented Reality 13 Definition 13 Terminology 14 Emergence of the Augmented Reality 14 Augmented Reality Systems 15 Mobile Augmented Reality Systems 16 Recapitulation 17 Augmented Reality for Museums 18 Overview 18 Remarkable Augmented Reality projects for Museums 19 2001 – The Virtual Dig 20 2005 – Virtual Showcase 21 2007 – Mixed Reality Museum for the Antikythera Mechanism 22 2008 – An Augmented Reality Museum Guide 23 2009 – Mixed Reality at the National History Museum 25

Recapitulation 26 Deployment of the ARS:CI 27 Framework 27 Platform (Apple iPhone) 27 Augmented Reality Techniques 28 Marker Tracking 28 QR Barcodes 29 Software Libraries 29 ARToolkit Professional for iPhone Beta 2.0 29 ZXing 1.5 30 Deployment 30 Reflection 31 Feedback on the ARS:CI 31 Authart 32 Unscene 32 Artour 32 Future Work 33 Bibliography 34

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INTRODUCTION The first visitor electronic technology used in a museum was a handheld device invented in 19521. The developers then, like the developers today, were drawn by its potential to mediate an experience individually controllable by each visitor which content was rich and personal to them, available at any time and suited to learning styles not served by a catalogue, text panel or label. The Stedelijk Museumʼs Short-Wave Ambulatory Lectures (Picture 1), though, barely delivered its potential, as the analogue technologies of the 1950s did not have the capacity to fulfill this vision. Developments in hardware, content creation, and functionality have since enabled ever more powerful handheld guides to deliver better on the mediumʼs unique potential. From its origin, as an analogue radio tour at the Stedelijk Museum, through its use by over three million North Americans as a Sony Walkman-style taped tour of the eight-stop “Treasures of Tutankhamen” exhibitions2 in the late 1970s, to its incorporation as a direct-access digital guide to the Louvreʼs permanent collection in 19933, handheld technology is today an established companion of the modern museum either as an audio or a multimedia tour-guide (Tallon and Walker, 2009). At the same time, the emergence of the Augmented Reality in recent years, a technology that achieves the augmentation of digital information on the real world environment, combined with the progress made in the field of mobile computing, led to the development of mobile Augmented Reality systems. When used for an exhibition, such systems can be the ideal handheld companion for the museum visitor. They allow the user to see the real-world environment of the museum augmented with additional information, which could be either two or three-dimensional graphics, enhancing the learning experience without dragging the userʼs attention from the actual exhibit to nearby illustrations or screen media. Specialised as it sounds, a complete mobile Augmented Reality system is as common as the Apple iPhone; hence Augmented Reality nowadays is much closer than everyone thought. This document is an extended research on Augmented Reality that led to the design and implementation of a cost-effective Augmented Reality handheld companion, which enhances the learning process in the museum context.

1 The first audio tour was Stedelijk Museumʼs Short-Wave Ambulatory Lectures invented in 1952. The audio stream was delivered through a closed-circuit short-wave radio broadcasting system, in which the amplified audio output of an analog playback tape recorder served as a broadcast station, and transmition was via loop aerial fixed around the gallery or galleries (Tallon and Walker, 2009).

Picture 1 Stedelijk Museumʼs Short-Wave Ambulatory Lectures

(Source: Loic Talon www.flickr.com/LoicT) 2 The Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition tour featured artefacts from Tutankhamunʼs tomb and ran from 1972 to 1979. This exhibition was first shown in London at the British Museum from March 30 until September 30, 1972. The exhibition moved on to many other countries, including the USA, USSR, Japan, France, Canada, and West Germany. The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized the U.S. exhibition, which ran from November 17, 1976, through April 15, 1979. More than eight million attended (Wikipedia, 2010). 3 In 1993 Acoustiguide company revolutionized the medium, with the introduction of the world's first digital wand player at the Louvre, in Paris. It allowed 'random access' tours for the first time. No longer did listeners have to follow a linear tour along a predetermined route. Now they could pick and choose the objects they wanted to learn about, and go at their own pace. (Acoustiguide Audio Tour, 2010)

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How to Read This report could be read as a whole, as a documentation of a prototype Augmented Reality project for museums and galleries and its accompanying research, but it could also be read partially. The chapters “Augmented Reality” and “Augmented Reality for Museums” are autonomous research documents that could be studied alone from whom it may interest. In addition a reader who is interested in the ARS:CI software suite could read the chapters “The ARS:CI” and “The Deployment of ARS:CI” in that sequence. This document covers a description of the ARS:CI in the homonym chapter, an analysis of the augmented reality technology in “Augmented Reality”, a research of ARS:CIʼs context in the chapter “Augmented Reality for Cultural Institutions”, an explanation of the technical details of the deployment process of ARS:CI in “Deployment of ARS:CI” and also a critique to the project in the paragraph Reflection of the same chapter. “Future Work” contains the steps that will be followed regarding ARS:CIʼs progress and also my personal goals as a new media professional and researcher from now on. ! This sign wherever it appears, indicates that there is a relevant video

available at: http://valeonti.com/?p=531 Methodology

The research method utilised in this report is mainly desktop research. Since the subject of study is on Augmented Reality and mobile computers, a field that evolves with high rates, but also deals with computing, hence most, if not all, of the research related to it, is either published directly, or referred in the internet, made the world wide web the ideal medium to use. Significant tools for my study are the research networks Linkedin1, Emerging Museum Professionals2, and most of all the Twitter3. This service allowed me to “follow” world-known pioneers of the new media for cultural institutions in their day-to-day research and practise. The three services mentioned above also contributed significantly to the promotion of my personal writings, particularly to the online publication of my research “Augmented Reality for Museums” by the online journal MuseumMedia4.

Picture 1 LinkedIn Logo

1 Linkedin is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003,[2] it is mainly used for professional networking. As of 9 August 2010, LinkedIn had more than 75 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide (Wikipedia, 2010) Visit: www.linkedin.com 2 Emerging Museum Professionals is a social network for museum professionals and hobbyist worldwide build on the NING platform. Visit: EmergingMuseumProfessionals.ning.com 3 Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc. that enables its users to send and read other users' messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page (Wikipedia, 2010). Visit: www.twitter.com 4 My research “Augmented Reality for Museums” was published on May 12th, 2010 in MuseumMedia.nl and it can be found at: http://museummedia.nl/case-studies/case-study-34-research-augmented-reality-for-museums/

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Regarding the development process of the ARS:CI, user testing was involved as well as interviews with professional interface designers to improve the user-interaction of the software. In addition during the software development, the Apple iPhone SDK Forum1 was essential, as it is for every other Objective-C programmer. Personal Motivation New media is a powerful tool able to offer compelling experiences; hence it is successfully appropriated from a plethora of industries, such as entertainment and advertising. New media has also been used for more moral goals, such as education, and that was the main drive that inspired me to work on the subject of learning-focused new media applications for museums. A folk quote says, “Education is our wealth” and growing up myself in a traditional education system I found it hard to gain knowledge, to earn my wealth. Later when studying Computer Science2 I learnt for the Intelligent Tutoring Systems3, which main purpose is to take advantage of Informatics to achieve learning in more interesting and less stressful ways compared to the traditional education system. In my masters studies I focused more on the field of design and on subjects such as Interaction Design, a study that aims to design the behaviour of a system so that is attractive to its users, offering an engaging experience (Wikipedia, 2010). After some research on new media for museums, I realised a well-designed learning experience can be as fun as a game (Picture 1). I felt that this was the subject I should follow, once I realised that if I made good use of the power of the new media I was able to ease, make more attractive and less boring something as important as the learning process in a cultural heritage institution. Apart from my studies, museums were spaces that have always filled me with awe, because of their aesthetical adequacy I would realise later. The subject of my thesis for the MA Interactive Digital Media course in Ravensbourne College 2009-2010 connected the dots for me, combining my technical background from my bachelors studies, my interest in design, which I developed in my masters, my immanent interest in museums and a moral goal to work towards.

1 The iPhone Development Forum can be accessed only by Registered Apple Developers. It is available at: https://devforums.apple.com/community/iphone 2 2009 BSc Diploma Computer Science, Informatics dept. of University of Piraeus, Greece 3 An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is any computer system that provides direct customized instruction or feedback to students, i.e. without the intervention of human beings, whilst performing a task, thus ITS implements the theory of learning by doing (Wikipedia, 2010).

Picture 1 “the learning experience can be as fun as a game” Clues to be gathered, mysteries to be solved and rewards to be shared, in the learning-focused game “Ghosts of a Chance” which ran in the Smithsonian American Art Museum from July 18 through October 25, 2008. The related publication for that game is available at: http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/goodlander/goodlander.html Fo

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