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The Vancouver Biennale has curated artists many international artists to create an art project for their open air museum. The VB Tour app allows curators and directors to organize tours for visiting artists. The mobile app will act as a platform to connect and engage the two groups together to provide artists with more insightful tours around Vancouver.

The Vancouver Biennale project is a 8 week academic case study completed in Summer of 2017. I conducted research, documentation of the process, and execution with my team. Primarily the render of parts of the mobile application and production of the video which communicates our final concept.

7 of the 8 weeks were spent primarily conducting various user studies and interviews with the members of the Biennale. We participated in field studies such as going on bike tours visiting artists would partake in and volunteered in city events.

Process

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The team spent 8 weeks conducting interviews, user studies and activities with the people working at the Biennale (We also rode bikes together). The Founder and President, Barrie Mowatt explained to us the organization’s vision and their next steps in achieving their goals. Community engagement was a key value that was constantly being mentioned from our interviews and activities.

Insights

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The organization has facilitated acquisition of over $3M worth of public art towards the city of Vancouver. Their main funding from sponsorships, donations and selling art pieces that are no longer displayed. Maintaining and creating new projects cost a lot of resources, resulting in many occasions where projects were stalled due to a lack of funds. International artists are often times new visitors when they first arrive to the Vancouver. The Biennale then takes these artists on tours around local communities to visit the city’s public art exhibitions and cultural landmarks.

The city of Vancouver requires private sectors to contribute $1.98 per square foot to the city towards public art. Hence there are many sculptures being built alongside land development projects that hold no significant meaning to their respected communities.

Final Design Focus

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We want to help the Vancouver Biennale improve how they organize information by providing a more effective way in planning events, meetings, and locations for future art installations.

The team focused on strengthening the relationships with visiting artists and provide them an insightful experience. Visiting Artists are studying and exploring the culture in these communities to create a piece that resonates to the people that live around it. Leveraging the tour experience for these artists can help establish a positive impression of the city to the visiting artists and encourage them to continue cooperating with the Vancouver Biennale.

Exhibition Maps

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Provides a map of where the Vancouver Biennale’s art installations are currently located. The concept is based off their existing exhibition map and art tours. The art installations can be filtered by several terms:  artist, year placed, location, and what exhibition it is part of.

Tour Planner

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Biennale members can create customized tour routes curated towards different artists. An artist will have to pick a location and eventually propose a concept gathered up from insights from their experience in Vancouver. Hence the tour experiences are carefully created by the Biennale to cater to these visiting artists as many existing installations do hold cultural meaning to the communities in which they reside.

AR Tagging

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Augmented reality tags can be placed on different structures and art installations before the tour. Members of the Vancouver Biennale can customize what information they want to display for the tour.