Google Arts & Culture

Submission 31,421

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About

Arts & Culture is a website and mobile application made by Alphabet. The product was created to give users an immersive experience when viewing or learning about art, utilizing virtual reality, facial recognition software and high-powered search.

History

On July 19th, 2016, Google launched "Arts & Culture," an iOS and Android application and website that allows users to explore the contents of more than 1,000 countries in more than 70 counties.^[1] That day, they released a video^[2] (shown below) to introduce the app, which as of January 2018, has received more than 200,000 views.

Features

Arts & Culture works similar to other Google products, using the company's high powered search features to allow users to explore thousands of works from their phone or desktop. By typing specific words or colors, the app searchs more than a thousand museums around the world for the best possible matches.

The app also created various ways to through art, both by time and color. These allow users to find exactly what they're looking for.^[3]

Additionally, using Google Cardboard, the company's virtual reality viewer, the app allows users to explore various museums, historical sites and concert halls from the first person perspective.^[4]

The app alosh as a feature called "Art Reconizer." With this feature, users can take a picture on their phones of a piece of art and Google will search galleries around the world. TechCruch called the feature "like Shazam, but for art."^[1]

On December 15th, 2017 Google updated the app to include a face match feature. Users take selfies in the app, and Google uses facial recognition software to match the user's face with a piece of art they most closely resemble.

Highlights

Face Match

In January 2017, Arts & Culture users began using the facial recognition software to match their faces to works of art. They would then share their results on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On January 4th, 2018, Instagram^[5] user @ihnatko posted their match (shown below) and received more than 200 likes in two weeks.

Over the next two weeks, popularity of the app continued to grow. Twitter^[6] user @biniambiz tweeted a picture of their match, the penis on Michaelangelo's "David." They included the caption "Fuck this app." The post (shown below, left) received more than 46,000 retweets and 138,000 likes in two days.

The following day, Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz tweeted his match with the caption "This google arts and culture app is pretty amazing. Feel real strong about my 40% 😳" The post (shown below, center) received more than 800 retweets and 7,300 likes in 24 hours.

That day, Twitter^[8] user @Fred_Delicious posted their selfie matched with Pope Leo X with the caption "Oh fuck off." The post (shown below, right) received more than 100 retweets and 1,800 likes in 24 hours.

Several media outlets covered the popularity of the app, including Mashable,^[9] Recode,^[10] Gizmodo,^[11] The Daily Dot^[12] and more.