I-Muse

The solution

Synesthesia developed the mobile app‘s front end (available for iOS and Android) and its back end/office.

Artificial Intelligence (CoreAI), developed by the University of Turin and the Polytechnic University of Turin, plays a crucial role by creating an ideal itinerary for visitors. It selects and matches artworks based on preferences chosen via tags. The app also enables museums to modify information about exhibits (history and images of the artworks) in real time, enhancing interaction with visitors.
The app includes specific features across three main sections:

• “Museums” – allows the visitor to virtually explore the rooms and browse through all the exhibits. The function also allows the visitor to plan the visit by displaying previously chosen stops.
• “Routes” – the user chooses the museums, works or routes he or she prefers. Two types of routes are available: an intra-museum route (involving works from a single museum) and an inter-museum route (with works from several museums). Their management is regulated by DatoCMS, which allows the museum curator to have autonomy in editing their own content
• “Stops” – Visitors can directly access artworks suggested by the app based on their interests.

I-Muse, developed with React Native, provides visitors access to information about exhibited artworks and routes through secure and anonymous interaction with sensors (iBeacons) present in museums. This solution enables effective analysis of how visitors engage with certain points of interest, allowing museums to improve their offerings accordingly. I-Muse is built on cloud and serverless technologies (AWS) to support the growing number of app users and coordinate all the data coming from the sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms.

The app features two key AI algorithms:

1. CoreAI – Offers personalized information on artworks and museum routes;
2. V-Predict – Predicts museum attendance based on historical data. 

In addition, DatoCMS was used, allowing us to create text and multimedia content dynamically through modular blocks and customisable components. This data is then displayed within the apps, always up-to-date.
The DatoCMS API is able to deliver content via a content distribution network, whose datacentres are located all over the world. When a page request is made, the content is delivered to the user from the nearest server, making the response fast and with low latency.

The app interacts with Dropper.ai sensors (a dashboard showing real-time museum visits, dwell times and routes taken by visitors) and iBeacons (sensors that hook up to the phone’s Bluetooth and interact with the app providing useful information to the user approaching the work) positioned at key points in the museums in order to obtain valuable information on visitor flows and enables future predictions.

Finally, I-Muse includes the gaming function developed by the company Garycom, which allows visitors to play with the collections present using 7 different video games. The interactive experience is definitely immersive.

Results

As Vincenzo Mollisi (Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turin and project contact person) argues:

“The project originated from a call for proposals funded by the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation and aims to introduce artificial intelligence into museums. We are university researchers with an academic and not an entrepreneurial background: we had expertise in prediction and algorithms, but not in app creation. Synesthesia helped us by providing support in the development, contributing decisively to the completion of the project”.  

Nadia Campaniello (Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Turin and Project Contact Person):

“We won the first edition of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation’s call for proposals on Artificial Intelligence in the ‘culture’ sector. Our project involved four departments: two from the Politecnico, the Department of Automation and Informatics and the Department of Architecture and Design, and two from the University of Turin, the Department of Economic-Social Sciences and Mathematics and the Department of Management. This is a very ambitious project involving eight museums, which together account for approximately 64% of visitors to the Turin area. Four associations also participated, including the Associazione Abbonamento Musei, the Osservatorio Culturale del Piemonte and the Big Data Analysis Lab of the City of Turin. One of the components of the project is the I-Muse app, developed in synergy with Synesthesia. We relied on Synesthesia because it is a growing company that also has many other museum-related projects. They will continue to support us in perfecting the app, and we hope that other collaborations will emerge in the future”.