Hello friends, here’s a short article on Snapchat and its recent collaboration with Jeff Koons. As you might all know by now, Snapchat is an image and video messaging app, developed by Stanford University students in 2011. Snapchat exists for 6 years now and has gone public in March of 2017 with a valuation of 25 billion (The New York Times). It was reported that in August 2017, the app had 173 million active users with more than 20,000 photos shared through the app every second (Omnicore Agency). Lots of facts over here but just so that you understand the context. However… Snapchat has never made a profit! The company said that they don’t think they will achieve profitability one day as they want to continue investing in their company. They are even loosing money as off now (Business Insider). This might seem crazy, right?
One of Snapchat’s recent additions was its collaboration with Jeff Koons – an American artist known for his balloon shaped figures – through an ART project using augmented reality. This collaboration will enable users to display the artist’s sculptures when being at 1,000 feet or closer of the geolocalized place. These ones will be available in different cities and places such as the Champs de Mars in Paris, the Opera House in Sydney or Central Park in New York.
(Photo from Snapchat)
Snapchat explained that they want to inspire young people to create and become creative with their cameras. Through this artistic project, the company starts an augmented reality feature that is just the beginning of something much bigger. The ART project will enable the positioning of different digital artworks across geo-tagged locations that people could be able to see through Snapchat’s ‘lens’.
Personally, I think this is a great idea! It is an easy way to learn more about art, visualising it while discovering different places. I love that, as it embraces creativity while being outside and spending time with friends.
(Photo from Snapchat)
Even though this project has created a lot of excitement among art fans (such as myself 😀 ), it has also raised the question of how the world is going to become if we get confronted to the real world plus many 3D elements coming up through our phone. Imagine our daily commute for example filled with entertainment and different types of advertising. What would you think about it?
Another question that has been asked is whether corporations should be allowed to place any content they want on the digital space that belong to every one of us? A graffiti artist mentioned that we should be able to choose which content we want to be displayed or if not, these corporations should pay a rent as they do for the physical space. This is an interesting argument I would love to hear your opinion on!! Feel free to comment to engage in this discussion 🙂
iAppAR 