Outdoor advertiser oOh!media and the National Gallery of Australia have partnered with internet search giant Google to harness Google Lens technology in an exhibition of Australian women artists in locations across the nation.
The three organisations are featuring the works of art of six* artists across high-profile Out of Home sites as part of the National Gallery’s Know My Name initiative – aimed at increasing the representation of Australian women artists and celebrating the contributions they make to Australia’s cultural life.
The national outdoor art event will offer Australians the opportunity to interact with the works of art and artists. Powered by Google Lens, passers-by simply need to open the app and direct their smartphone's camera towards the panel to discover more.
In partnership with oOh! and the National Gallery, Google custom-built an immersive audio-visual capability, allowing audiences to engage with the Out of Home panel and uncover the story behind the six women artists featured; a short video appears from the work of art when viewed through the Lens app.
Neil Ackland, chief content, marketing and creative officer at oOh!, said the campaign signalled the future potential of Out of Home in combining creativity and technology in new and engaging ways. “The objective of Know My Name is to elevate Australian women artists, and so by using technology and outdoor to bring theses amazing artworks to life we can really deliver something original, immersive and unexpected that enhances public spaces for people as they go about their day.”
Aisling Finch, director of marketing at Google Australia and New Zealand, said Lens enabled people to explore the world around them. “Google Lens enables you to ‘search what you see’ – whether it’s learning about landmarks, flowers, or translating text in real time,” she said. “With this collaboration, we were able to help oOh!media and the National Gallery of Australia to deliver an interactive experience that entertains, educates, and importantly shines a light on these incredible artists.”
The Google Lens capability will work on six works of art wherever they are viewed, whether on oOh!’s Out of Home assets across Australia or in the gallery itself. The oOh! campaign is now live and will run until March 2021, while the exhibition, Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, runs from 14 November 2020 until July next year at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
* The six featured artists are Melinda Harper, Nora Heysen, Olive Cotton, Robyn Stacey, Grace Cossington Smith and Sally Gabori.
To see a video of Google Lens with the NGA campaign, visit: https://vimeo.com/472826649 (password = VR)
To watch one of the short documentaries, download the Google Lens app on either iPhone or Android, and hover your camera over the image below.
In July 2020, oOh!media and its wide format business Cactus Imaging were awarded Best Use of Multi-Format in the Outdoor Media Association’s Q2 2020 Creative Collection competition for the ‘Know My Name’ campaign.
