Technology is making its way into places where it was traditionally not entirely welcome, and one of them is the museum. Virtual exhibitions are multiplying, as are preservation and restoration projects. Add to that the widespread use of mobile devices, and it's inevitable to discover a new wave of apps dedicated to art. One of them is Smartify, which uses visual recognition and augmented reality to provide extra information to the user about a specific work.
The last time I visited the museum, I was especially drawn to a small painting that shows an elderly man eating soup and studying a small notebook delicately balanced on a glass of water. Google insists that I'm talking about "Dos viejos comiendo sopa" by Francisco de Goya (with the occasional Andy Warhol hit mixed in), but the search engine gets it wrong on several levels, starting with the fact that the work is in the Museo del Prado, and I didn't go there. Every time I tried to locate that painting online, I lost hours, and believe it or not, the museum didn't provide any information. The feeling is that there must be a simpler way to identify art, and that's where Smartify comes in.
Smartify had a sort of official presentation at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in early October, and without much ado, its developers promote it as "a Shazam for the art world".
The app relies on visual recognition and, in the background, uses a series of "digital signatures" during identification that reduce the original content to a group of lines and points. The result is an augmented reality experience that provides users with additional data about the work and its author. Smartify's operation is centralized and tied to the updates its database receives; however, it also has a social component that lets users share their favorite works.
Needless to say, Smartify is not perfect and has a lot of work ahead. Its database has an average of 50,000 entries, enough to recognize the most significant works, but user reviews online speak for themselves. Smartify is available on iOS and Android.
