Virtual reality museum experience by HYPERTECH, MOMus and CERTH/ITI under the 2gether project

HYPERTECH is proudly participating as project coordinator and member of the consortium of the 2gether project. The project was launched in February 2020 with the vision to develop a cutting edge and state of the art technological and conceptual framework for the accessibility of the general public to art. The project is funded by the Greek National General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) with a three-year horizon of delivery.

In recent years, European cultural heritage organizations, as well as companies active in the field, have realized the need to abandon the traditional passive ways of presenting cultural heritage and turn to creating new, more attractive presentation methods that will allow the active participation of visitors. Recent technological developments in both mobile devices and wireless networks offer innumerable possibilities to users, while opening a new field of research for the creation of innovative applications and services.

Combining the possibilities of producing and sharing digital information provided by modern technologies, a new field of opportunity is created for cultural institutions to reach the public, but also to interact with it in a creative and innovative way. In this way, new channels of approach are created, providing targeted information and messages to users, while promoting their active participation in the dissemination of cultural heritage.

2gether is a partnership of the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki - MOMus, the Information Technologies Institute (ITI) of the Centre of Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) and Hypertech aiming to design and deliver a 3D walkthrough of the MOMus -and not only- exhibition in an environment of Virtual Reality. In parallel, 2gether will establish a real time Crowdsourcing platform to promote young artists and their work while at the same time collecting the audience’s reaction and preferences.

The main objective of 2gether is to:

• Suggest and apply new cutting-edge technological solutions for the further promotion of the Greek cultural heritage;
• Transform the museum or gallery experience and allow the visitors to take an active part in it;
• Encourage new artists to share their work and identify the immediate feedback from audiences;
• Invite the audiences to interact and expose their thoughts and preferences towards a piece of art;
• in the bottom line, create an experiential workshop for the understanding and the virtual tour in the history and the evolution of contemporary art, focusing on the Greek art scene.