Calling artists and galleries

We are looking for an artist or gallery who would be interested in exploring how beacon technology could be used in creative, fun and engaging ways. We would help advise you on what can be done with the technology and work with you on delivering the technical implementation.

Why?

There is a lot of activity with beacons at the moment as people rush to deliver beacon-enabled solutions. We think that there are exciting ways to explore what could be done, and that by working with an artist or gallery we could produce something that is more interesting and fun and that pushes the boundaries of what is being done with the technology at the moment.

What are beacons?

Bluetooth Low Energy beacons (commonly referred to as iBeacons – which is Apple’s name for their flavour of beacon technology) are going to have a significant impact on the way we can interact with the space around us.

A beacon emits a signal that identifies it. Smartphones can pick up this signal – and can establish the approximate distance from the beacon. A good way of understanding this is to think of a beacon as having a tripwire around it. Stepping over the tripwire can trigger some action on your phone. The radius of the ‘tripwire’ can be adjusted by changing the output power of the beacon – it could be a matter of inches, or as great as 50m.

We have been piloting this technology in the Millennium Galleries in Sheffield for the Recording Britain exhibition. We have built an app as a proof of concept that automatically presents you with relevant content as you move around the gallery.

What can beacons do?

The following are a selection of fairly random suggestions for things we could do on an app using beacon technology. Hopefully this will inspire much better ideas…

• as you approach an artwork you get an audio message
• different music plays as you move around the artwork (perhaps have a sequencer app where people can switch audio tracks on or off by moving around the room)
• your phone vibrates if you get too close
• if there are different people viewing the artwork at the same time they could each receive an individual message or instruction or start playing a different sound
• show a random message when people approach an artwork

What next?

Get in touch using the details on the right if you think you might be interested. Let’s have a chat and see where we end up!