Ana Prvački | Wired | By Lauren Good
The Fine Arts Museums invited artist Ana Prvački, known for her participatory projects that use humor as a means to disarm traditional museum activities and behaviors, to visit and imagine a project that uses the museum experientially, rather than as an exhibition venue. In the resulting project, "Detour", Prvački leads visitors around the museum to look anew at the building, grounds, and collections, and imagine different ways of viewing, connecting, and behaving. In collaboration with Google Arts & Culture.
Why take a boring selfie in front of the Mona Lisa when you can use AR to dive deep into it?
Did you know that the painter Rockwell Kent, whose splendorous Afternoon on the Sea, Monhegan hangs in San Francisco's de Young Museum, worked on murals and advertisements for General Electric and Rolls-Royce? I did not, until I visited Gallery 29 on a recent Tuesday afternoon, phone in hand.
Because the de Young's curators worked with Google to turn some of the informational placards that hang next to paintings into virtual launchpads, any placard that includes an icon for Google Lens—the name of the company's visual search software—is now a cue. Point the camera at the icon and a search result pops up, giving you more information about the work. (You can access Google Lens on the iPhone within the Google search app for iOS or within the native camera app on Android phones.)
The de Young's augmented-reality add-ons extend beyond the informational. Aim your camera at a dot drawing of a bee in the Osher Sculpture Garden and a quirky video created by artist Ana Prvacki plays—she attempts to pollinate flowers herself with a bizarrely decorated gardening glove.