A user of “Art4Europe” application takes a photograph of a painting while being in a museum. On this basis, he/she obtains additional information on this painting from Europeana. If the description of the painting is in a language unknown to the user, the application can translate this description and even covert it into an audio form – read it. Additionally, the user may be led to e.g. an on-line shop with reproductions of the painting or books with its description.

The programmers representing the Poznań University of Technology decided that in the prototype of Art4Europe, they will use image recognition technology, developed and implemented by them earlier in the SaveUp application. During the competition, they recreated this technology and created an application which recognized paintings on the basis of a photograph taken with a mobile phone. The SaveUp application uses image recognition technology. It is designed for users of iPhone telephones, iPod Touch players and iPad tablets. Its basic functionality is book recognition on the basis of photographs of their covers, taken with a built-in camera of the device.

The prototype of the application, constructed for the competition, identified paintings on the basis of photographs taken with a phone camera. Then, it recognized the work, providing the name of the author and title. Information on the painting, retrieved from the server of the Europeana Foundation, was then translated into a selected language and played (via a speech synthesizer). The application had also a function of saving the browsing history.

The award ceremony was held in Brussels at the Digital Agenda Assembly. Awards were presented personally by Neelie Kroes, the Vice-President of the European Commission and Digital Agenda Commissioner.

Project website: http://www.art4europe.com/