The Dali (5/6/2023 Saturday)

Family members looked up things to do near Ocala and found The Dali museum in St. Petersburg. Knowing very little about Dali, that sounded like a great place to visit. My sister inlaw needed to fly out before we had time to go but my sister, her husband and I eventually went.

I don't frequent art museums,, but i have gone to a number of them over the years. Honestly Dali pushes my limits of art appreciation. Much of it is clearly well executed just a bit odd for my tastes. The exhibit uses Augmented Reality (AR) to make the art come to life and help interpret some of the hidden genious that on first glance is just confusing.

As a tech guy, I am a big fan of Augmented Reality. In my opinion it wins over virtual reality. Virtual Reality (VR) takes your vision into another world, but leaves your confused body in this one. VR is disorienting for most people. Augmented Reality (AR) enables the illusion of objects existing in our world. A visual trick that allows the virtual world to appear as a stationary object in the real world that can be viewed from differnt angles as we manuver around it. The un-augmented field of view provides enough situational awareness of actual reality for most people to feel propertly oriented in the real world. For me the lure of AR was to provide visual overlays onto real world objects with qauntitative environmental data and labeling. So one could look at a rack of machines and easily identify individual machines, or cooling racks that are stuggling to maintain their cool. Yes I'm a geek, and have done some VR/AR work just for fun.

The Dali utilized Augmented Reality to bring large paintings to life. With the download of a phone app, you select the painting you wish to explore and then point your phone at the image. The portion of the painting visible on the phone screen now becomes a video playing an introduction to the work and then highlighting various clickable parts that you may click for further exploration. At the museum it's a pretty cool effect. The nice thing about AR is that once you have the phone app, it's trained to recognize the image in any format. So even the photo of the painting will trigger the AR effects. I encourage you to give it a try and explore the image here and others available on the museum website. Use the "What's On" menu's "Permanent Collection" screen for a link for the phone app and images. Once you have the phone app installed and run it, click on the AR at the bottom center of the screen. From the Permanent Collecdtion screen search for one of the works listed in the AR phone app and display it on something like your computer screen or large TV. Ideally you should display the entire image on the screen, but a portion of the image normally works. A partial view of the painting creates a complete view of the AR video, so the AR affect isn't as good. Don't let the image go out of view on your phone or you will have to watch the intro again. You can bring the phone closer to the image to zoom in on details displayed inside the AR app. The image I use here has some other features that make it cool but isn't one of the better AR experiences. This blog entry image should trigger the AR for "Gala Contemplating...". I chose this image because from a distance it looks like a head shot of Abe Lincoln (much easier to see with your eyes almost closed) but when closeup it's a totaly different work of art.

These are a few of the works that really need AR explaining:

How do you re-enter the real world after The Dali and AR? In our case, a mad dash through city traffic in search of food and a visit to another unreal place. The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa.

For the second time today I'm out of my element and confused by what's around me., I'm not a gambling/casino guy, but why not. Dali paintings seem to have a lot of elements that alude toward the sexual. The Hard Rock was a bit less subtle with their aluding. There are a lot of attractive staff and patrons at the Hard Rock. After leaving a museum I felt a bit compelled admire all of the rock costumes and items on display along the walkways. Okay maybe a few of the women on exibit too. In a few hours I learned a tiny bit about slot machines, how to get really lost in a huge casino, and that the smoke in the high roller area smells better. And I discovered a new way to turn $40 in to $0.40. As an added bonus I supplied my contact information to another corperation for their marketing onslaught.

On our way back to play cards at the house we stopped to see baby aligators. Yes they are darn cute litle lizards. Then dinner at a Ocean Buffet back in Ocala. Finally ending with a nice game of Five Crowns with family before they returned to their campground.