Art lovers rate exhibits with NFC

Visitors to the STRP Festival in the Netherlands can use NFC phones to tag exhibits with keywords, share their experience via social media, rate individual exhibits and create a personalised poster incorporating their favourite experiences.

STRP 2011
STRP: Visitors use NFC to 'love' exhibits

Visitors to one of Europe’s largest art and technology festivals have been given the opportunity to use an NFC phone to rate the cultural exhibits on show.

NXP has teamed with start-up U-Approach to enable visitors to the STRP Festival, which is taking place in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, to ‘love’ an art work, tag it with a keyword and share it via social media. “By simply tapping a work of art with an NFC enabled device, visitors can rate pieces with up to five hearts,” the chip maker explains. “Enabling visitors to share their appreciation for the arts with their friends via social media, the Android app also gives visitors information about the art through a synthesized voice.”

Works of art tapped during a visit can then be converted into a personalised poster. “In this way, the Android app encourages cultural participation, enriches the festival experience, and introduces a new dimension to NFC,” says NXP.

“As a cultural festival, we feature artistic and creative experiments with technology,” explains Frens Frijns, director of the STRP Festival. “We believe that the ‘internet of things’ is evolving into a ‘clickable world’. We are the first festival in the world to provide that experience in a way that helps people better understand the art while giving them the ability to share their own interpretation, introducing a new social dimension to art interpretation in the festival experience.”

“Last year, the STRP Festival was the first festival in the world to use NFC readers and RFID cards to increase participation opportunities for its visitors,” says Wouter Leibbrandt, manager of NXP’s advanced applications lab. “We are now making the next step with NFC-enabled smartphones: Giving festival visitors the opportunity to experience a world full of physical hyperlinks.

“Working with the creative industry gives us access to very imaginative minds and a non-typical audience eager to experience this type of innovation,” Leibbrandt adds.

A video has been produced by NXP which features the event’s director discussing the project:

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