MAG/NET app release
New technological milestone for the GTC’s long-standing collaboration with the LGT Bank and the Liechtenstein Princely Collections.
The culmination of the ETH Game Technology Center’s (GTC) Behind The Art with Augmented Reality work presented at external pageTEDx, Zurich Meets Seoul, the Berlin Science Week, and other venues is now available to the public with the new MAG/NET app, an extension of the LGT Bank’s online magazine for business, art and society.
The MAG/NET app brings paintings from the Old Masters to life using augmented reality. The app allows anyone to interactively experience art pieces and discover exciting background information with the whole family from the comfort of their home.
After downloading the app, the user accesses a external pagewebsite and points their smartphone’s camera at the images in the website’s gallery. For each of the paintings, the app enriches the art experience with contextualized information and playful components that seamlessly blend with reality. One of the components created by GTC is the addition of dimensionality to the “Revival to New Life” by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1852). This component offers something truly new by expanding the painting in depth and perspective, allowing the user to explore the painted scene as if it were part of the real world.
The app also enhances the “Portrait of Albert and Nikolaus Rubens” by Peter Paul Rubens (1626/27). This masterpiece is very delicate because it was painted on seven thin wooden panels glued together without reinforcement. The MAG/NET app uses augmented reality to visualize the layout and separation of these panels in a way that could never be done in reality, due to the fragile nature of the painting’s construction. Nikolaus, the younger boy portrayed in the painting, is playing with a goldfinch bird on a string, which has been interpreted to symbolize the fleeting nature of life because the boy's mother passed away shortly before the painting was made. The MAG/NET app adds emphasis to this poignant symbolism by allowing the bird to fly away. Each time the user taps on the bird, it evades the touch, never to be captured again.