ReBlink is a augmented reality installation that remixes historic pieces of art and updates them with modern technologies and products that drive our daily lives. Simply point a device at a painting and change history.
In an effort that combines cutting edge technology and some of its best known portraits, the Art Gallery of Ontario is launching ReBlink - an exhibit that uses augmented reality to lets visitors see modern-day updates to paintings.
Created by Toronto digital artists Alex Mayhew, Ian Kelso, and their team at Impossible Things, it uses an app that gallerygoers can download on their phones or on tablets that the gallery will provide.
Using these it provides a vision of what the artists think the subject would be doing if the painting were made today.
Take The Marchesa Casati, one of the AGO’s best known portraits for example. With the app, the red-haired aristocrat is holding a selfie stick, like a modern-day celebutante.
Proponents of augmented reality (AR) say it can provide digital context to the world around us, although in this case it can also seem like a gimmick to entice millennials to use technology.
In opposition to this some would say that gallery’s and the like are places where we can escape the modern, hectic digital world, but it’s all a matter of opinion.
Housed in the Jackman Gallery in the Art Gallery Of Ontario in Canada the exhibition runs until December 3rd.
Take a look at the video below to get a better idea of what you can expect to see.