For over a decade, Arabia Street Festival has brought music, food, and art to the streets of the Arabia area in Helsinki, Finland. The annual festival celebrates communality and sustainability, and street art has been in its focus since the beginning.
13th of its kind, the festival organised on the 5th of September 2020 went online for the first time. In addition to the online program, the festival audience could, and still can, walk around the Arabia area to explore the gorgeous public art. This year, nine street art pieces enhanced with augmented reality decorate the streets and buildings.
| Client | Arabia Street Festival |
| AR production | Festival's artists |
| AR platform | Arilyn Manager |
Arabia Street Festival highlights sustainable development in its actions. With the pandemic roaming around, the program moved online. The festival still wanted to offer physical art and cultural experiences, so public art and AR tied a knot.
The role of street art is essential to the festival, and together we enabled various artists to explore the possibilities induced by AR. The artists could create the AR content themselves in the content management system Arilyn Manager, with Arilyn experts' help.
"AR brings new dimensions and moving image to Arabia area's rich street art scene."
- Arabia Street Festival, September 2020
The murals and street art created between 2014 and 2020 got a new life with AR in collaboration between the street and digital artists. The AR artwork is viewable at least until the spring of 2021.
The AR experiences are visible through the Arilyn app, free to download from the App Store, Google Play, and Huawei AppGallery.
Check the locations from the maps below (text in Finnish). If you don't have the map with you when you hit the Arabia streets, the artwork enhanced with AR is also marked with Arilyn's AUGMENTED ART -stickers.
With the global lockdown easing, 2021's event was arranged as a hybrid on May 15th. In addition to virtual workshops, Arabia Street Festival introduced new AR murals to the audience in an art orienteering.
From May 25th to 23rd, visitors of the Arabia area could walk around and take pictures of the street art and the AR contents within and share them on social media to participate in a competition.
Arabia area now features 13 AR art pieces, from which four are new ones, launched in 2021's event. Check the new pieces from the video below!
You can find all locations of the AR street art from the Arabia Street Festival's website.