filmpro innovates with augmented reality through Nesta’s Amplified programme
Here at filmpro we are really excited to be a grantee of the Nesta Amplified fund. Amplified is set up to support cultural organisations looking to generate social impact. Filmpro is led by Caglar Kimyoncu (Artistic Director) and Chas de Swiet (Producer) and is a digital arts agency that aims to support artists who experience exclusion and other barriers in their practice. As disabled artists we feel passionately that the creative sector should fully represent the whole of society and that everyone should have the right to experience and create art.
Caglar has been working with augmented reality (AR) since early 2018 and in February of this year delivered an exhibition at the PSBK gallery, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This exhibition looked at the question what makes you who you are and featured a multi-channel video installation and AR. He built an Android app with an Indonesian developer which enabled still images throughout the exhibition site to trigger additional layers of moving image on audience member’s phones.
We are now coming to the end of an Arts Council funded creative lab, at filmpro’s studio in Stockwell, to look at the functionality of syncing layers of AR content to moving image. The intention is that these additional layers can provide disability access provision (e.g. BSL, audio description, captions) but also additional artistic content. For example, an artist could offer content on demand such as additional angles, parallel plot lines or contextual and research materials.
We feel that AR could be an ideal tool for access provision, which is easy to deliver, and flexible enough to meet the requirements of a wide variety of audience members. While there are a range of companies developing models to provide access solutions via Augmented Reality, they are generally focused on single modes (e.g. BSL or Audio description) and oriented towards large scale providers who must invest significant resources in partnership with developers in order to load content to the application.
The end point we ultimately want to get to is where an artist can pick up our app and with little development time upload content to the back-end to give the audience member the experience that the artist is looking for.
As part of the Amplified project we want to pilot the functionality developed in our creative lab with artists or exhibitors working with moving image, are you interested??
Ideally you will have a single or multi-channel video installation that is going to be presented in a gallery environment during August to November 2019. We ask for an interest in AR and a willingness to test our app both for access provision & artistic content. Amplified allows us to offer some time from our developer and some resources to help cover the additional AR production.
If this rocks your boat then do get in touch with us, preferably by 7th June:
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