At Second Canvas we strongly believe that super high-resolution images are an extraordinary asset for museums. Beyond the initial impact, these amazing images are a tool for engaging storytelling.

One of the latest innovations to our apps is the possibility to use your device’s camera to automatically recognize the works of art in the apps, and thus access all related interactive and multimedia content. This new feature has been developed using Apple’s ARKit, the biggest augmented reality platform in the world.

And how does it work? Let’s take a look at some examples:

Imagine you are looking at a book, magazine or catalogue and you find one of El Greco, Raphael or Bosch’s masterpieces that are included in Second Canvas Prado app. Just open the app, scan the image with your device and you will automatically be able to enjoy all the additional multimedia features that Second Canvas offers. This option also works if you are seeing a video and one of these works of art appears.

A third possibility: you are visiting SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark and find yourself in front of “The Artist’s Wife” by Laurits Andersen Ring. If you hold your device up to the painting and open Second Canvas SMK app, it will immediately recognize the artwork and let you access, among other content, the amazing x-ray vision which lets you see under the uppermost layer of paint to discover what is going on beneath.

For the moment we have only used this technology to read reality and enrich it, not to add virtual content to real life. Clearly, this is only the beginning. Let’s see what the future holds.

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Photo: Bjørn Giesenbauer
Detail: “The Artist’s Wife” by Laurits Andersen Ring. X-ray vision