Imagine having with you, at all times, an informed and reliable art assistant in possession of a photographic memory, who could offer you an instant description of a work of art, recommend a show to visit and suggest an article on the industry to read.
It sounds rather farfetched yet, thanks to technology, everything mentioned above is possible, albeit not in the way you were perhaps thinking. The assistant we talk of is, in a manner of speaking, not a real person.
Instead, it’s an ingenious app, one that goes by the name of ArtGuru. It decodes paintings effortlessly, it learns about your interests and it keeps you abreast of the latest happenings. And, moreover, this is only the beginning.
Developed by a “small team of art and technology enthusiasts”, there are three key features that make this app quite an intriguing prospect for art lovers the world over. It analyses paintings that you’ve snapped, curates “memories” in a gallery and recognises what you like based on the images, in the vernacular of the web, you “like”.
It’s perfect for all types of art lovers, be it those who are beginning to show an interest or aficionados who swear by regular visits to galleries and consume all types of relevant media. It complements, enhances even, your personal experience of art.
Additionally, as ArtGuru’s Ulrike Lunze’s explained in Create Hub noted last month, the advantages of the app are also felt by museums and galleries themselves. It can, for example, provide institutions insight into how visitors behave, offering them new lines of thought.
“Subscribing museums are able to replace their mostly expensive and outdated audio-guide systems with the ArtGuru app,” she continued in her piece. “As we do not rely on beacons or QR-codes, museums do not have to implement any internal infrastructures.”
The app also works when users are offline. So, for example, let’s say you’re in a gallery and are keen to know more about a particular picture and add it to your personal gallery – you snap and save it to ArtGuru. Once you get an internet connection again, the app will recognise it and voila, you can delve deeper.
Such is the power behind it, it can analyse a work of art in milliseconds. It currently has a database of over 30,000 paintings in the UK, but as with the app evolving – it adds new features every two weeks – you expect that to dramatically increase over time.
Currently there is only an iOS version that can be downloaded – for free as well – but the developers have stated that an Android and Windows version will be available soon. They see 2015 as a breakthrough year and judging by the performance and philosophy behind it, it is reasonable to state with confidence that there is a lot of potential in ArtGuru.
Cadogan Tate has state-of the art storage facilities all over the world.