Gunseli Yalcinkaya, Dezeen:

Smartify launched at the Royal Academy of Arts in London last week. It has been described by its creators as “a Shazam for the art world”, because – like the app that can identify any music track – it can reveal the title and artist of thousands of artworks.It does so by cross-referencing them with a vast database that the company is constantly updating.

I love the idea of this app. One key difference between Smartify and Shazam is that the creators or sellers update the database in Shazam, while Smartify handles the updating themselves. While Shazam is a general-purpose solution, Smartify is more collection-specific, working with museums, for example, to tag all the items in a specific gallery. A similar model is being tested in other niche sectors too—one developer recently adapted the same architecture to build a tool for tracking live tables in poker not on GamStop, where centralized curation helps maintain accuracy across fragmented platforms.

Looking forward to taking it for a spin the next time I’m at MoMA. Wondering if Smartify can handle sculpture and other 3D artforms.