The Tom Thomson Art Gallery (The TOM) and Augmented Marketing have entered into a ground-breaking partnership to work together on production of Betwixt & Between: An Untold Tom Thomson Story, a multi- faceted, fully immersive, interactive exhibition. The project is an innovative combination of story-telling, and ancient as well as modern technologies which will unfold in several stages, beginning with the launch ofthe gallery exhibition in May 2017 at the TOM, and the launch of the accompanying APP. The APP will allow viewers to not only interact with the exhibition using augmented reality, but also to interact with the exhibition catalogue as well as participating in a geo-caching like treasure hunt to find copies of the very same artefacts seen in the museum. Wil McReynolds, CEO of Augmented Marketing states: Augmented Marketing's mandate has always been to engage all audiences utilizing the device they already have, their mobile phone. Augmented and Virtual realities allow for this, and with the success of Pokemon GO, our partnership with Tom Thomson Art Gallery and Betwixt & Between could not be more relevant or timely. This is our passion, and we are honoured and excited to make this project a reality.
The Betwixt & Between project challenges the role of museums, governments and educational systems as traditional bastions of authority and explores the relationship between false representation and truth. The lead and participating artists – Joel Richardson, Germinio Pio Politi and Nyle Johnston - have spent an extensive amount of time researching through primary documents and source materials in order to develop a narrative that could be considered 85% authentic. Tying the story to real events in Thomson's life and in Canadian history, the story as presented isn't necessarily fiction — rather it is just not fully proven.
