Abstract
This chapter explores The Romantic App an ongoing project in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It is a custom application for smartphone or tablet made especially for the nineteenth and twentieth century paintings of the European Painting and Sculpture wing in the Art Institute of Chicago. Art Institute students designed and executed The Romantic App in the Fall semester of 2015, with a second iteration produced in Spring, 2019. It is intended both as a teaching vehicle but also as an art work, allowing young people to engage collaboratively with mentors from another time and period. Augmented Reality was chosen as a medium for this project because it functions in parallel to the grand painting tradition of the nineteenth century, that moment when photography had its first dizzying impact on Parisian culture. Like so many of the optical viewing devices of that epoque, The Romantic App also reveals illusions and phantasmagoria hidden beneath the surface of the visible world. When the app is open, one can glimpse visions and optical illusions through the interface of a device, integrated into a curated selection of paintings scattered throughout the Museum. Using one’s phone as a kind of magical mirror or optical lens, users are encouraged to examine individual paintings, to see hidden animations, enactments and other kinds of moving pictures subtly mixed into their surfaces.
Published Version
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