Augmented reality mobile application as a support in presentation of orthodox iconography

Abstract

Orthodox Christian icons are a very valuable part of the national historical heritage of Bulgaria. To preserve and properly present data about icons, it was created a web-based platform Virtual Encyclopedia of Bulgarian Iconography (BIDL). It contains icon descriptions and context explanations as well as information about icon painters, drawing methods, and painting techniques used, for a large number of icons all over Bulgaria. Observation and contemplation about the icons can be motivated by religious feelings, in which case icons are viewed as an aid in worship, or by interest in their artistic features. In both cases, it is important and useful to get information about an observed icon at the site of observation and at the time while observing. In this work, we presented a mobile application based on augmented reality technology that facilitates and speeds up access to iconographic content stored on the BIDL platform. The main goal, based on image recognition by a specially designed augmented reality module, is providing instantaneous and on-site information about the concrete icon observed by the visitors of churches and monasteries, or museums and galleries. The classical search over a large database, requiring keywords such as geographical location, name of the church, and similar, to access the proper information is avoided, since the icons are immediately recognized.