Be more than just fun filters for your flagship app. This has been Snap’s will for some time. The company behind the ephemeral photo-sharing social network has diversified his activity and has shown that he is now an innovative and important player in photography, but especially in augmented reality, his constant workhorse.
If we know the Snapchat app for its multiple effects to add to your photos before sharing them with friends, its various augmented reality experiences, we probably know less that it also works white label for third parties (specifically its camera whose advances are used by both the Adidas or Louis Vuitton app for their own experiences as by Samsung or even Google for their smartphones). Of late, Snap has decided to become a much more active player in augmented reality for designers and other sectors.
The French branch has launched Snap AR Studio, a creative space located in Station F (Paris) where the various in-house experiences will be available to developers who want it, from the Lens Creator studio to design filters to Spectacles. , augmented reality glasses for content creators. Because at Snap we strongly believe in the future power of augmented reality and we want to prepare future players.
Development of augmented reality in France
It is also in Snap AR Studio where the platform wants to show another facet of its know-how. “We want to develop culture through augmented reality,” explains Donatien Bozon, the new director of Snap AR Studio and former head of YouTube Space in Paris, to Tech&Co. “Therefore, we are honoring the commitment made by Evan Spiegel at the Choose France summit in June 2021.” The Snap boss then promised that his company would participate in developing the potential of augmented reality in France to increase its impact in the culture, entertainment and education sector. Developers will be the first to receive free sessions and workshops, as well as assistance in creating experiences. Schools could go on for the long haul.
And it is already taking shape. If the finishing touches have not yet been put on the Snap space at Station F, which is due to open at the end of November, the creative studio is already busy. “We have a team of a dozen people, with very different professions such as VFX specialists, producers, designers, engineers, etc. One of his missions is to design augmented reality experiences for cultural actors. We create content for non-commercial partners such as museums, cultural institutions, associations, entertainment actors, etc.”, explains Donatien Bozon. “It’s important to show everything that the Snapchat camera can do and even some exclusives that we will test in these applications before releasing them to the masses.”
A sound and visual collaboration with the Center Pompidou
Snap has already begun working with the National Library of France to offer an experience around the Richelieu site and its revised history in an augmented reality experience (through December 31 on the site).
Now it is the Pompidou Center that will enter a new reality. From November 16 to February 27, 2023, on the occasion of the Christian Marclay exhibition, the building and Snapchat will offer an augmented reality experience transforming the façade into a musical instrument. playing pompidou will allow visitors to immerse themselves in the artist’s sound universe.
Snap’s Landmarker technology was used, which had already allowed monuments such as the Eiffel Tower to be seen in a different way. Using the app’s camera pointed at the Pompidou Center will trigger an audio and visual experience. It will stage the raw noises found by Christian Marclay inside the museum. Snapchat users can create a custom music loop to share.
If you can’t go there to try the experience, it will also be accessible from the Pompidou Center’s Snapchat profile or via the QR code of the exhibition on the latter’s website.
Everyone is ultimately a winner. Snapchat shows its involvement in the French cultural sector. Museums and institutions have here a tool to reach a new, younger and curious public, willing to discover the works from another angle. And with its AR Studio, the company even hopes to awaken a lot more vocation to make augmented reality “a real job”, as Donatien Bozon likes to say. How technology, the virtual and culture can support each other for the common good when necessary.
Source: BFM TV
