Making AR-t History

For the first time in its history The Metropolitan Museum of Art had to close its doors. And at the same time, Verizon was taking their 5G network nationwide. So we decided to take the museum along with us. With an immersive Augmented Reality mobile experience, we reopened the virtual doors of The Met, and didn’t just bring the museum to people’s devices… we brought it to life, like they’d never seen it before.

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THE MET,

LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.

Hyper-realistic detail, with pixel-perfect accuracy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s galleries. 12 never-before-seen curations, designed by The Met. 46 interactive challenges that allow visitors to “un-frame” art and place it in their homes with AR. Exclusive pieces of the experience even come to life on 5G. All built and powered with Verizon technology, illustrating how 5G will enhance and change the future of art and cultural experiences. To deliver the virtual experience, we used the latest form of communication back in 2001: texting. We created a first-of-its-kind multimedia platform with existing applications, leveraging every native tool within a text conversation, for a one-day, real-time, immersive MMS experience. An invitation went out for users to join the event on 9/12 and throughout the day participants received new texts every hour—at the times of day the events actually happened twenty years ago—putting them in the shoes of the employees who were there.

THE FUTURE

OF ART IS 5G.

LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.

For users on Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband mobile network, select pieces of the experience were brought to life through immersive AR. The low-latency and capacity of 5G makes real-time, high-resolution rendering possible—allowing visitors to walk into a first-century roman cubiculum, watch the unicorn in the famous tapestry come to life or weather the elements of George Washington’s famous crossing.

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BREAK THE RULES

LIKE AN ARTIST.

To create a visual ecosystem for the experience and its surrounding campaign materials, we used a combination of dynamic typography that breaks the grid along with a reinterpretation of the art itself, through data visualization. Ultimately, it yielded a modern and unexpected approach for a long-standing institution, further emphasizing the first-of-its-kind nature of the experience.

AN EXHIBIT HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT.

Stay-at-Home, gallery-openings-in-a-box (using The Met’s remnant art crates.) Official museum plaques around the city launched 5G AR-t in the streets. Without having any paid media at our disposal, our clever placements and social outreach garnered earned media and created awareness for the experience.