In just a few months the Museum will be releasing a new packet of activity sheets designed to engage families in our historic Hall of Northwest Coast Indians. At the same time we will release a new app, developed with Geomedia, to offer a unique augmented reality experience. Below is a sneak peak screenshot from the latest demo, which offers a good idea of how this will all work.
First is the physical sheet itself – which, in this case, starts by challenging the family to look for a particular object in the hall from the Haida nation (teaser: it’s a puffin mask). Once found, the center of the page asks the child to color in the mask (below you can see the orange pencil lines on the sheet), featuring art created by Shoshannah Green, a contemporary Haida artist. When the page is viewed through the AR app, an animated pedestal appears supporting a 3D-manipulatable puffin mask, texture mapped with the art from the page. In other words, the child visitor gets to color on paper and then collaborate with the Haida artist to co-create the 3D version. Finally, augmented behind the mask is a curvilinear watercolor scene, digitally painted by the same Haida artist, presenting a special moment from an original story printed on the reverse side of the sheet, featuring a Haida child and the puffin mask; if you look close at the photo you can see once again how the child’s art is reflected within the dramatic scene, where the Haida child triumphantly holds aloft the colored puffin mask.
(The project was initially developed with Global Kids Youth Leaders in a 2014 summer camp, which you can read more about here.)
