PATIO Interactive

Home AR

Neil Ever Osborne

An augmented reality gallery experience that takes guests behind the scenes of iconic conservation images by Neil Ever Osborne and into the home of where these stories were born.

Toronto-based nature conservation photographer Neil Ever Osborne spent his last 15 years documenting environmental stories around the world. Opening his first fine art gallery, entitled ‘HOME’, he reached out for help with how we could leverage XR technology on-site to better convey the backstory of his photographs.

Home: AR is an interactive visual storytelling experience in collaboration with National Geographic Explorer and Conservation Photographer Neil Ever Osborne and his fine art gallery debut in Toronto.

This project explores the use of Augmented Reality in connection with some of Osborne’s work surrounding environmental conservation, to enhance the guest experience and provide them with exclusive contextual behind-the-scenes content from the field.

“Given that Osborne wasn’t always going to be present at the gallery to explain to guests the story of each image, we made use of his behind the scenes footage and created this augmented reality app to “visually augment” the storytelling of his pieces. This app takes guests into the journey and making of the photographs, giving them more context and meaning behind the image they see on the walls today.”

– Tiffany Lam, Project Lead

The Challenge

The main challenge was to utilize existing content from story assignments to immerse and enhance the user gallery experience, all while introducing another channel of storytelling.

We wanted to give guests both context and a better sense of place as to the home & history behind these images and where/how they were created and help guests relate better to the images, through a more personal intimate connection.

Using Augmented Reality and image recognition technology, we developed a mobile app for IOS devices to trigger specific video content when specific images were scanned. With iPads hosted on site at the gallery, guests were able to hover the device camera over the framed artwork and unlock exclusive content.