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This app disseminates a museum collection of pictorial art, both from a technical and from a contextual point of view

The University of Cantabria (Spain) launched its first augmented reality application for mobile devices: Quintanilla AR. Love peace, hate war, with the aim of disseminating a museum collection.

The app is conceived as a guide to the set of murals painted by Luis Quintanilla for the international exhibition in New York in 1939, commissioned by the Spanish republican government of the time. The set, an Asset of Cultural Interest, has been on permanent display at the University of Cantabria since 2007. It is part of the digital strategies implemented since 2015 by this institution when it comes to disseminating its university cultural heritage.

This project “is part of the programme of subsidies for activities related to the recovery of Democratic Memory and the victims of the Civil War and the Dictatorship,” explained the Vice-Rector for Culture of the University of Cantabria Tomás Mantecón.

The application has an avatar inspired by Luis Quintanilla that introduces us to the work and its context. “Using augmented reality, the user navigates through the details of the pictorial technique used, the manner of execution and structure of the five murals in each of their so-called working days, as well as allowing us to identify some characters or references to works by other artists,” highlighted the Exhibitions Department Director of the University of Cantabria, Nuria García.

The app can be installed on Android devices and will soon be available on IOS and has both Spanish and English versions. It allows greater accessibility to the contents by means of sound messages for the visually impaired.

Captions:

1.- Tomás Mantecón (Vice-Rector for Culture of the University of Cantabria) and Nuria García (Director of the Exhibitions Area at the University of Cantabria), during the presentation of the app.

2.- Nuria García explains the features of the augmented reality app.

3.- Some of the murals by Luis Quintanilla displayed at the University of Cantabria.