Watch the Girl With A Pearl Earring smile: Amazing iPhone app brings paintings to life

By MARK PRIGG

One of the interactive images shows Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's the Girl with a Pearl Earring. On the iPhone, the girl looks to the camera.

An augmented reality app has brought some of the world's most iconic paintings alive on an iPhone screen.
The AART app uses the phone's camera to recognise when the handset is being pointed at a print of original of the painting.
The iPhone screen then comes to life, displaying animated versions of the picture.
'ARART lets a new story unfold, as if time trapped inside the painting had been stirred alive,' its mkaers say on their website.
'ARART offers a glimpse into the hidden story veiled behind the painting.'

The firm is also using the technology to bring books such as Alice in Wonderland to life

The team behind the project have already developed several interactive portraits.
The include a version of the Mona Lisa that turns to wink at the viewer, and a version of Van Gogh's sunflowers where the plants blow in the wind.
The firm also says the technique can be used for books, and has built a version of 'Alice in Wonderland' where the mad hatter springs to life on the phone screen.
'Everybody is familiar with the beautifully illustrated “Alice in Wonderland', the firm said.
'When reading this novel with ARART, the beloved characters will come to life and move about spiritedly.'

The phone shows characters running across pages and jumping around

The team are also developing music applications for the technology, and have already created an app for Radiohead's Kid A album which lets iPhone owners control the record and 'scratch' on their phone's screen.
The team are also working with artists to develop special works to take advantage of the technology.
A new work by Akamatsu Masayuki integrates sound and video into the artwork, which can only be seen on the phone handset.

Radiohead's Kid A can be controlled via the app, with the user scratching the screen to control playback.

When the camera is overlaid on the wall panel, ARART will play music and video according to what it sees.
A second project, Yutaka Kitamura’s 'Flowering' is an artwork that features blooming flowers recorded in high speed.
The paintings display flower buds and when the camera is overlaid onto the paintings, ARART will show clips of the buds blooming into flowers.

The app has made three of the interactive portraits available on its website, with more being developed with galleries.



source: dailymail