Explore the White House with AR App from Nexus

Tis the season to send out Christmas cards, so why not wrap up this politically-eventful year with an interactive card from the White House?

Nexus Studios’ Interactive Arts division today unveiled its new AR mobile app titled 1600, which allows you to explore one of America’s most famous landmarks and celebrate President Obama’s legacy.

By downloading the app – for free on iOs or Google devices – and then holding your phone in front of a one dollar bill, pointing it at George Washington, you can visit the White House and listen to Press Secretary John Earnest as he shares some of Obama’s most prized memories.

You can explore the grounds and witness different events that took place throughout his presidency; from his inauguration, Independence Day and the Easter Egg Roll. Keep an eye out for the Obama’s, who frequent the lawn, as well as sneak appearances from President Kennedy and President Lincoln. 

“We think this digitally innovative experience is a fitting collaboration to mark the end of the Obama’s administration that has sought to engage the tech community in government at an unprecedented level,” says the studio’s ECD/co-founder Christopher O’Reilly.

shots caught up with Nexus’ head of Interactive Arts, Luke Ritchie (pictured, below) to find out what was involved in bringing the project to life and how the team got involved on such an iconic idea.

When were you approached by the White House and what was the brief they gave you? 

During the Summer, we'd been approached by the White House digital department, who work on new media and citizen service initiatives. They'd seen our recent AR experience for the New Yorker and were inspired to see how they could use the technology to tell their own story. They were impressed by the visual sophistication that is now possible and needed a platform that could be easily viewed by millions of people without expensive hardware. The brief wasn't clear right away, but the intention was always to show the role of the White House in democracy.

Did they already know what they wanted to do or was it a process of working out the best, most interesting and innovative idea? 

We discussed a range of interesting ways to roll out the experience, beginning with more location-specific ideas around the building itself. In this current phase of AR, you need a "marker" to track the rendered image, so we even discussed using the building itself as the marker. As the ideas became more cemented, it was clear we wanted to reach a larger [and more international] audience and there simply aren't natural markers that everyone has easy access to.

When you settled on the concept, what were the next stages of production? 

We began by learning as much about the White House and its history as possible, exploring the different directions we could take the story. We knew that there was too much history to fit into a 90-second-long experience so we decided to take a different tact and focus on an abstract year instead. Once we'd adopted this story, structurally things began to fall into place and we started to work with the White House to discuss the iconic moments that we should potentially feature and how we could inject a sense of charm into the experience.   

From a production perspective, we had an extremely iterative process where the entire team had a working build of the experience from week one. Our teams work with 3DMAX and Unity pretty exclusively and we only test on devices. This allowed us to see the vision come to life early and improve it as necessary.

What was the most challenging part of making this project come to fruition? 

AR hasn't really been considered a storytelling platform - certainly not at a narrative level - so this was a real challenge for us and we're hopeful to see more interactive and animated stories told in AR. From a technical perspective, we've done some pretty amazing work to make it look aesthetically stunning, but I'm most proud of the team for optimization. It's unusual to see this level of detail, animation and characters in the same experience - we've really pushed the boundaries for mobile-based AR. Perhaps the most challenging part though was simply making something worthy of the client, their legacy and the stage on which this launches.

And the most rewarding? 

Knowing President Obama and the First Lady have seen your creative work is pretty high up there. But we're a passionate studio that loves to tell interactive stories; so the fact that it'll be seen by lots of kids and Americans who probably need a positive boost is the best reward.

How long did the project take to create? 

Three months of production (once we had the idea).

How long will the AR content be live and available? 

Permanent (or until proven otherwise...).

You’d worked with the White House before; did that make the lines of communication any easier? 

Yes, we worked with Google Made w/Code, The National Park Service and the White House on the 92nd Annual National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. 

On 1600, we worked much more directly with their team and they've literally been the best collaborators. The team is super smart, quick and passionate; it was a total pleasure.