A popular New York City museum is taking its interactive experience to a new level.
Arcadia Earth is an immersive museum that aims to educate visitors about the environment through captivating experiential art that showcases ecosystems such as forests and the open ocean and global issues such as single-use plastic waste and overfishing. Through the Arcadia Earth app, guests are able to interact with the exhibits and take pictures with animals that float right by.
Now, Arcadia Earth is taking it one step further with the introduction of HoloLens, a wearable augmented reality device that allows guests to interact with the museum on a whole new level.
“[HoloLens has] never really been used in a large scale in public. and definitely never with this size. We are currently the largest HoloLens experience ever made,” said Valentino Vettori, founder of Arcadia Earth. “It’s an inspiration moment that could trigger people to pay attention to a topic that we like. I like that we truly push the envelope both with the hardware and installations to be visually exciting but also educational.”
The HoloLens is activated through a special headset that you receive at the start of the museum. Users activate the world around them by looking in the direction of the holograms they see, bringing them to life and unlocking hidden gems, environmental facts, and lifelike animations.
As you walk along with the exhibit, guests can learn more information about the exhibits by looking directly at floating orbs. Each room is dedicated to different aspects of the environment and conservation, and each augmented reality experience allows guests to be fully immersed in the environment through a virtual diorama, complete with scenery and wildlife holograms.
The HoloLens has a feature that allows guests to collect gems in each room, which contain more information about each exhibit, and helps add to the carbon footprint that they build at Arcadia Earth. With HoloLens, guests can truly choose their own adventure within Arcadia Earth and choose to interact with some of or all of the experiences that come with HoloLens.
“I think it’s going to trigger curiosity, trigger personalization, so you can choose some gems or don’t. You may pay attention to a topic that I don’t care [about], I give you the opportunity to make the entire journey based on what you want,” said Vettori. “People can stay 30 minutes to an hour, some people stay 2 hours. HoloLens adds that extra two hours and you learn about everything, and if you don’t just, pick your best.”
The lens on the headset can also flip upwards, allowing you to take a break from the augmented reality should you need one without going through the hassle of taking the whole headset off. For Vettori, the HoloLens addition enhances the opportunity to explore each room, but also encourages taking in your surroundings with your friends and family without the headset as well.
“The Arcadia immersive exhibit itself is beautiful to take pictures of or video, you can’t really do it with HoloLens. Anyone at any time should be opening the mask so they can enjoy the room and the art itself, and when they are ready, they can continue the journey and put it down,” said Vettori. “It also helps if you have a family and there’s a moment that you want to relay to your significant other, you can. It gives you the real reality apart from the augmented reality.”
With the new HoloLens experience and through Arcadia Earth as a whole, Vettori hopes that visitors are able to fully enjoy the experience and hopefully take some of what they learned and apply it to how they interact with the environment.
“My hope is that everyone who comes in here, first and foremost, has fun and enjoys it,” said Vettori. “But if they could all leave with a little commitment, a tiny commitment to change a thing in their life for a better climate, I think I will win in terms of my personal missions, which is to exist and to really make a change.”
The new HoloLens experience is expected to be available to the public on May 3. Tickets for general admission are $39 peak and $33 off-peak, with the HoloLens tour being offered as an exclusive experience accessible by a special ticket price of $59. Proceeds from tickets sold will go towards planting mangrove trees – chosen for their effectiveness in sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
Arcadia Earth is located at 718 Broadway. For more information, visit arcadia-earth.com.
