Step inside moving murals on the Yorke Peninsula
A small Yorke Peninsula town made a big contribution to the local art trail, complete with an immersive augmented reality experience.
The town of Warooka has three new murals on main street buildings and infrastructure in the town, which were officially unveiled at the Yorke Peninsula Grounded Festival, part of the statewide SALA festival.
Moving Murals Project coordinator and Warooka resident Carolyn Ramsey tells CityMag the artworks are part of an initiative to share the town’s culture and attract more visitors.
“This gives people a reason to linger longer and explore the town, and gives them some information about our local environment, as well as helping local businesses,” she says.
The project was a collaboration with the University of South Australia (UniSA), which lent its expertise in augmented reality (AR) to the project.
An app, developed by UniSA’s Research Centre for Interactive and Virtual Environments and facilitated by Dr Ben Stubbs allows visitors to scan ‘trigger points’ on the murals with their smartphones to view immersive animated videos and audio recordings.
Simply scan the QR codes on the surrounding signs, download the app and interact with the murals.
“When visitors scan the QR code, they are taken to an immersive AR app where they access stories about the murals and how they reflect local life and environments,” Ben says.
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Two of the three murals in the series currently have the AR trigger points.
‘Molly’s Tank’ showcases a Narungga story, while the side of the Foodworks supermarket across the road features a mural including depictions of the brush-tailed bettong, goanna and mallee fowl.
“The underwater themed mural on Molly’s Tank includes an AR story of an underwater diver, and a local Narungga story of the shark. Across the road at Foodworks is the local, native landscape mural that includes AR stories of the re-wilding (natural restoration) process and local habitats,” says Ben.
The murals were produced by lead artist Jasmine Swales with a team of local artists, as well as students from Warooka Primary School, who contributed to the murals’ designs, stories and paintings.
Some of those artists include Wallaroo animator Orlando Mee, who worked on the animations for the AR videos and musician Liam Smith, who composed music for the project.
Dr Kim Munro, from UniSA’s Creative People, Products and Places Research Centre, is responsible for editing the multimedia videos accessed through the app.
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Kim told CityMag she and Ben visited Warooka multiple times over the course of the project.
“The first time we went down we met up with a lot of local artists and some other people that were helping to drive the project.
“We had a day-long workshop talking about what kinds of stories and what length and what format would work well for augmented reality,” she said.
Kim says they were looking to elicit feelings of surprise and delight among visitors, and wanted to know what locals thought was interesting about the region, as well as what they were proud of.
Beyond the initial consultation, Kim and Ben returned a number of times to check progress, test images and ensure that the AR elements could be implemented in a straightforward and effective way.
“On the last trip we talked about how we can engage some of the local residents and shop owners to help drive the project.
“When people come to the town, it’s not just about engaging passively with technology. It’s also an opportunity to talk to somebody who works in the supermarket, or the coffee shop or the hardware shop.”
At the end of the day, Kim says, the project was a way to facilitate connections with the community.
“The project was really driven by the community. It was around what stories that they felt were important to tell around the town and the region.”
The choice to use AR, Kim says, was to elevate the project into something more engaging.
The third mural, on the side of Warooka Hardware, showcases a dramatic coastal landscape and its native flora and fauna. It does not yet have any AR activations, pending further funding.
“We would like to complete a few hotspots in the murals, and then there’s another mural that’s been painted since,” Kim says.
Carolyn says the project has been very positively received and would not have been possible without the collaboration of UniSA and artists from the region.
“The trialling of this new technology and the creative thinking that was done would not have occurred otherwise,” she says.
“With Warooka being 300km from Adelaide, we are always open to any opportunity to attract more visitors, showcase local creativity, support local businesses and exceed people’s expectations.”
