CULTURAL HERITAGE Mix Museum

Federico Balboni Matteo Fabbri

info@museum-mix.com www.museum-mix.com

MIX - Museum Interaction experience: a new way to promote Cultural Heritage

MIX is an interactive app for the promotion and communication of cultural heritage. It is the ability to view and interact with different types of information in an immersive environment, but without losing the link with reality. It allows museum curators to enter diversified information without resorting to third parties and a visitor to access content thanks to new forms of communication(AR, VR, MR) in an easy and innovative way before, during and after the physical visit. It consists of a webtool to upload the contents in a simple way, without knowing programming languages, and a series of mobile applications for smartphones and tablets, which exploit augmented reality. Thanks to this innovative form of digital communication, the end user can interact with different types of information, in real scenarios and mixed within museum structures or archaeological sites. Currently in the Cultural Heritage market these contents are inserted externally to the museum (ex: from a software farm) with large costs, with MIX all this can be done independently internally with lowering of these costs. On the same museum itinerary, more information paths can be developed for different audiences. The app allows visitors to enjoy innovative guides available on their smartphones / tablets through augmented reality. After opening it, you will enter a code that will be provided at the museum entrance or at the time of booking the ticket on the internet. You will find a screen with all the museums that have joined the MIX project. Once you have chosen the museum and the path, framing the work with your device, which will use the camera to recognize it, you will be able to see enhanced contents around it. Clicking on each one you can interact: reading additional descriptions; listening

to explanations on the context in which the artist worked, on the realization or other curiosities directly through his own headphones, with out having to use an audio guide; seeing videos with the curator who gives information or about the pictorial / sculptural techniques used so that you can interact even after the visit is over and be able to take the museum experience at home. The museum will has an e-mail access to the CMS toup load the contents and a code to communicate to visitors to be able to use once the app is downloaded. It will be possible to “increase” targets (explanatory panels, photos, pictures)by associat ing photos, videos, texts, pdf cards, links to internet sytes and360 ° videos (with external link to YouTube) according to the specifications and the user manual which will be pro vided to you. You will be given two quarterly reports on app usage data and visitor permanence statistics on each target / content. MIX already has some museums on its app, one of them is a museum in Parma, Italian Capital of Culture 2020. The Museum of Chinese and Ethnographic Art in Parma has chosen to propose MIX to its visitors. “A new form of communication, that makes the collection usable also in digital format”, says the curator Chiara Allegri. “MIX is the digital platform that best met our needs, right in its being an app that promotes art in a simple and intuitive way.

It is characterized by a webtool on which we have easily loaded about thirty of works enriched in the presentation by the use of texts in pdf format, images, links to websites, videos and videos at 360°. Thanks to the convenience of the app and the clarity of the content, our visitors have been able to interact with the exhibits in a new and fun way, recognising the added value of this application”. So, our purpose are: 1. More exciting visit, for a different audience 2. Tickets sales improvement 3. More content for diversified audience (gamification, academic research) 4. Post visit interaction (e-shop, social networks) The project involves two companies: TryeCo 2.0 srl and weAR srl. TryeCo 2.0 srl works on 3D prototypes through laser scanners and 3D printing and weAR srl develops software for augmented reality.

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