MunchMunch, the fun, innovative creativity tool that celebrates the artistic philosophies of Edvard Munch, was developed by Arcade in partnership with MUNCH and Digital Catapult. MunchMunch is designed to bring the attitudes and principles of Norway’s most iconic artist into the modern era, enabling school children to place, edit and share their Munch-inspired works in locations of their choosing across the physical world.
MunchMunch began life as a concept called #Unfinished. Munch’s work was famously attacked for its apparently careless, incomplete appearance, yet his aversion to the painstaking pursuit of ‘perfection’ became the very quality for which he is most celebrated. Unafraid to experiment, quick to evolve, fearless in baring his soul through his work; his attitude and philosophy offer so much to young people growing up in a world increasingly encumbered by false vanity, social pressure and sanitised self-expression.
We wanted to draw a parallel between Munch’s artistic principles and the important lesson that there is no such thing as perfection. The message to our young audiences was that, like Munch’s artwork, they themselves are gloriously, wonderfully #Unfinished: perfectly imperfect, which is just the way it should be.
“The beauty of Munch's work is that it often looks unfinished and actually it doesn't matter. There's not this perfect end goal. We want kids to understand it's okay for things to be unfinished and you shouldn't be striving for perfection.”
MunchMunch invites children to create art via traditional means – just pen on paper – but then uses technology to instantly convert their work into augmented reality. From art to AR, in the tap of a button!
They can then publish their work, but also continue to develop it as much as they want, creating new ‘remixes’ of their previous pieces. They can even ‘remix’ other people’s work, creating new perspectives and fresh takes on artwork that continues to evolve as a celebration of creativity and true self-expression.
The platform may have changed its name but the core concept remained the same, encouraging its young audience to be as free and fearless as Munch himself.
MunchMunch entered into a closed beta across hundreds of schools in Norway during 2021, with a goal of reaching over 200,000 school children. If successful, the goal is to evolve it into a fully fledged public creativity tool for the Norwegian education system, and potentially even take it to a global audience around the world.
“Arcade was a perfect collaborator for MUNCH when seeking to create an engaging digital art experience for school children across Norway,” said Elise Kaspartu, Digital Innovation Project Manager at MUNCH. “The team is brilliant at understanding the challenges set for them and with a agile and effective process to find solutions. Collaborating across countries under the challenging circumstances of COVID never set a stopper for a positive collaboration and good progress.“
The app is available to schools in Norway, but you can see the growing collection of MunchMunch artworks here (the website is in Norwegian, but is quite intuitive!).
“Arcade was a perfect collaborator for MUNCH when seeking to create an engaging digital art experience for school children across Norway.”