Museum Maker
An augmented-reality art game invites visitors to uncover museum artworks and place them in their physical surroundings. Searching, excavating and arranging turn the encounter with a collection into a process the visitor helps construct.
Commissioned by Seoul Museum of Art in 2021 and presented in Collection_Open Hacking Mining, the work emerged during the pandemic from a question about how a collection might meet its audience when access to galleries and storage rooms was restricted.
Augmented reality offers a way to move this encounter into the visitor’s environment. The mobile game gives the collection a route into everyday life through discovery and play.
Searching and excavating
On-screen prompts guide the visitor from searching to excavation. They touch the floor, find a glowing object and decide whether to uncover it. The interaction gives the collection a sequence of encounters that the visitor initiates.
Each act of discovery brings another artwork into view. The prompts make attention, curiosity and a small physical gesture the means of progressing through the game.
A collection in everyday space
Excavated artworks appear in augmented reality among the objects and spaces around the visitor. A shop, an outdoor site or a public interior becomes a setting in which the collection can be rearranged and encountered.
Placement changes the relationship between artwork and surroundings. The visitor takes part in deciding where the encounter happens, bringing discovery into the act of composing an environment.
Completing the museum
When all works have been unearthed, the system announces that the museum is complete. Completion is reached through accumulated gestures, giving the visitor a role in producing the museum experience.
The game treats the museum as an open process of encounter. Its collection becomes material for searching, arranging and making meaning in relation to the places people inhabit.
A museum takes shape through the visitor’s discoveries and gestures. The collection becomes a starting point for making new encounters in the world outside its walls.
Credits
- Commissioner
- Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA)