Sheffield is home to huge animated animals that come to life when residents and tourists wave their phones towards the roofs of buildings.
During the summertime of 2016, Pokémon Go became an international phenomenon. Young people and grown-ups alike were obsessed with finding Pokémon, and they were known to travel far and wide in search of the elusive creatures. When millions of users noticed that an online universe could be accessed by just waving their mobile device in the direction of them, the experience and the concept of AR were instantly transformed.
Sheffield, a British city with an estimated population of 580,000 located south of Manchester, has recently fallen under the sway of a similar notion with an undoubtedly far more honourable aim. Sheffield residents may enjoy digital artworks sprouting from the roofs of the city’s most famous structures rather than going out to hunt for collecting creatures.
One of the largest AR art paths in the entire world was introduced in Sheffield in February. The route, “Look Up!,” has four different structures on it, each of which has the code displayed on the pavement beneath. Viewers may scan the QR code with a free application to navigate a series of dynamic arrows that go skyward. They may see a stick-like creature constructed from various colours of balloons float upward, whirl about, and vanish into the air there from the top of a structure while using their smartphones. Over 1,500 individuals installed the application within the first week after its release, and close to two thousand barcodes were checked.
Megaverse is a local firm that collaborated directly with Niantic, the firm that created Pokémon Go, to develop the platform and software. Universal Everything and Human Studio, two more local companies, created the digital artworks. The project’s origins may be traced to the construction of a solitary structure in the heart of Sheffield. From the 1960s, while it continued to be referred to as the Cole Brothers shop, the John Lewis chain store has served as a landmark in Sheffield. Then the epidemic struck, the shop shut down, and John Lewis evacuated.
Mark Mobbs, manager of place branding and marketing for the city, states that there was a tremendous outpouring of anguish and disappointment following that event. According to The Guardian, one local citizen compared the shutdown to losing a close family member.
The use of technology to increase public involvement is not new to Sheffield. In order to show tourists what both Frederick Law Olmsted-designed landscapes could have appeared as if they continued to exist, Buffalo, New York’s Olmsted Park Conservancy in 2018 converted two freshly erected signage into augmented reality (AR) gateways. More recently, the city of Phoenix created an AR treasure hunt that enables guests to find out concerning the city’s past, present, and potential at a dozen spots throughout the downtown area. This was done in collaboration with the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University.
The Sheffield art route was designed to take visitors to four landmarks within one mile of each other. Mobbs claims that the John Lewis tower is a symbol of hope for a better world. Open Days at the University might benefit from the prestige of the structure itself. According to Mobbs, the Central Library’s convenient location in the municipality’s theatrical centre rendered it an obvious choice as an excursion site. The crew is working on adding additional structures to the art trail.
