StreetARt Uses Layar Player to Find and Share Public Art, Graffiti, Tags and More

Art is everywhere. Whether as simple as a crude marker sketch in a bathroom stall, or as intricate as a mixed-media mural covering the side of a building, there are dozens of inspired artistic creations free to view right outside your door.
These pieces are often hidden in back alleys and tunnels, or painted over by the city or a rival artist, however, with MOB‘s new mobile streetARt application (available for free in the iTunes store), you can see the many different types of public art around you, past and present.
MOB developer Rob Manson has talked about street art with colleagues for years, as there are hundreds of great public art pieces on the streets and at skate parks near his house in Bondi Beach, Australia as well as in Sydney and Melbourne. Once the Layar Player became available for iPhone, Manson wanted to create an app to show it off that used widely distributed content in the AR view, so an ever-growing international collection of street art was the perfect fit.
Manson started the content-gathering process by running scripts across Flickr, which resulted in about 30,000 street art images in over 500 locations. The streetARt app then adds to that content, allowing users to snap photos and upload them directly to streetARtAPP.com.
In the iPhone app, users join the streetARt community by connecting their Twitter accounts where they can “like” and comment on photos as well as upload their own from inside the app. Currently the “likes” and comments are only visible to other app users, but Facebook/Twitter sharing is coming soon, along with other features like permalinks and advanced filtering options.
While Layar Player (and therefore the streetARt app) is currently only available for iPhone, streetARt’s content is fully viewable from within the Layar application, so both iPhone and Android users can view the images.
MOB is an Australia-based business innovation lab focused on mobile and online platforms. A member of the Layar Partner Network, MOB is responsible for the BuildAR layer creation tool as well as numerous other layers.