Augmented Reality at Home

8, May, 2020

Turn your living room or backyard into a public art gallery!

Use the Hoverlay app to turn your living room or back patio into a Greenway Augment Reality (AR) gallery, and explore historic images of the Greenway corridor while learning about the transformation of Downtown Boston and the park’s creation. You can discover contemporary artworks with your family, in your home, and share your experiences through in-app photo and video.

Through a curatorial partnership with Boston Cyberarts and Hoverlay, in 2019 the Conservancy commissioned three prominent AR artists and local historian Amy D. Finstein to to conceptually explore themes of transportation and the automobile in relation to The Greenway’s past and present.

The Greenway Conservancy’s Augmented Reality (AR) exhibit blends interactive digital elements into our real-world environments by overlaying historical imagery and contemporary art on fixed locations on The Greenway.  Now you can transport these exhibits to your own home, thanks to our partnership with Hoverlay. See the simple instructions below.

We’ll be releasing new AR experiences each week, so stay tuned across our social media and our website. Don’t forget to share your in-app photos and videos with us online for a chance to be featured!

    • Download Hoverlay 
      • Install the Hoverlay app and search for the Bring The Greenway Home channel to see content
      • OR type https://hoverlay.io/BringTheGreenwayHome in your mobile browser, and follow instructions to install Hoverlay camera browser app on your mobile device
    • Select a content card on the Bring The Greenway Home channel and select whether you’re inside your home or outside in your backyard. We will be sharing new content every week; check back to discover contemporary artworks and historical photographs of the park. 
    • Use the Hoverlay app to explore the interactive installations, originally positioned on The Greenway, in your own home or backyard! 
      • Please note: the app requires an AR capable iOS (6s or above) or Android phone or tablet.
    • The Hoverlay app allows you to take photos and video of your AR experience directly within the app! #BringTheGreenwayHome by sharing your experiences on social media and tagging our accounts!

    Hoverlay is an augmented reality platform that revolutionizes the way we share information and tell stories by placing digital content right in the physical world.

  • Available now on the Hoverlay App: 
    • Car Park X, Will Pappenheimer
    • Speed, Nancy Baker Cahill 
    • Fossil Fueled, John Craig Freeman
    • Collision, Nancy Baker Cahill 

     

  • Available now on the Hoverlay App: 

    The historic photographs shown within the augmented reality exhibit narrate more than a century of growth and change along the Rose Kennedy Greenway. These images capture the city’s changing economic prospects, its accommodations for new modes of transportation, and its embrace of city planning and modern engineering to address successive eras of challenges.

    • Dewey Square, 1905 South Station – Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company collection
    • Big Dig Construction – Courtesy Amy D. Finstein
    • Chinatown – Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection
    • Demo near East Tunnel Building – Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection
  • View a curated conversation with Hoverlay and the Greenway Conservancy on public art in the digital age.

    Greenway Conservancy Director and Curator of Public Art, Lucas Cowan, moderated a lively conversation engaging perspectives of contemporary art from artists, software developers, and curators. The panel explored how increased access to technology and the borderless possibilities of Augmented Reality enable the scope of public art to exist in all spaces, from public parks to our living rooms. How has an increase in technology, from the growth of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, intersected and expanded public art opportunities, especially in a pre/post COVID-19 world?

     

     

    Panelists:

    • Lucas Cowan, Director and Curator of Public Art, Greenway Conservancy
    • Nicolas Robbe, CEO, Hoverlay Inc.
    • George Fifield, Director and Founder, Boston Cyberarts, Inc.
    • John Craig Freeman, Conservancy Artist & Professor of New Media, Emerson College

The Conservancy has elevated public art in Boston by capturing the imaginations of residents and visitors with its award-winning exhibitions. As we continue the Conservancy’s tradition of innovation during this challenging time by expanding our AR installation beyond the boundaries of The Greenway; we are making our public art available to you, the public, wherever you may be!