In this article, Brendan Ciecko describes an app his company developed with a museum partner and his thoughts on the role of augmented reality in museums in general. The app is intended to replace text descriptions or audio guides by giving visitors a way to access additional information about a painting by looking at it through their phone camera. Rather than just adding another layer on top of traditional sources of information, Ciecko believes augmented reality may be the “assailant in the death of the traditional guided tour, audio guide, or wall label.” This is a more optimistic view of augmented reality than many people have, myself included, but it’s an interesting perspective.

However, in terms of how augmented reality should interact with museum content, Ciecko and I are much more in line. He poses the question, “How can we leverage existing content, which is both more abundant and scalable, rather than rely on the creation of new content?” The app described in this article and ARticulate both aim to build value on top of existing museums works and exhibits rather than being the basis for a new exhibit or new type of content.