A modern building with a black exterior and glass entrance doors, flanked by palm trees and a lush green lawn, with a clear blue sky in the background.

Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery

The Challenge: Understanding the Unseen

Before Ortus AI, the SARJEANT Gallery, a prominent cultural institution, grappled with a common challenge: understanding real-time visitor behavior beyond basic headcounts. They needed deeper insights into who was visiting, how they moved through exhibitions, and what truly captivated their attention. Without this critical data, optimizing exhibition layouts, enhancing visitor experiences, and making data-driven operational decisions were largely based on guesswork.

The Ortus AI Solution: Intelligent Insights from Every Angle

Ortus AI stepped in as their technology partner, deploying a comprehensive suite of AI-powered analytics solutions that transformed the gallery's approach to visitor intelligence. We leveraged the gallery's existing CCTV infrastructure, turning passive video feeds into dynamic, actionable data. Our solution delivered:

  • Precise People Counting & Tracking: We established highly accurate people counting and people tracking capabilities, offering real-time visitor numbers and detailed movement patterns throughout the entire gallery space.

  • Tailored Zone Analysis: Through custom zone design and the creation of a digital floor plan, we enabled the gallery to define and analyze specific exhibition areas. This allowed for gallery exhibition space counting & tracking and multiple space counting, providing granular data on engagement with individual artworks or themed sections. Crucially, Ortus AI's digital mapping system allowed staff to view in real time designated zones and monitor and see live counts of people flow in certain areas of the digital floor, enhancing space management and visitor flow optimization. Our system also allowed for multiple zone configuration with a single CCTV visual feed, maximizing efficiency and minimizing hardware needs.

  • Demographic & Flow Insights: Our technology integrated age & gender identification to help the gallery understand their audience demographics, informing future programming and outreach. We also implemented bi-directional counting and foot traffic flow analysis, revealing popular entry/exit points and common visitor pathways.

  • Engagement Heat Mapping: With heat map counting by congregation, foot traffic, the gallery could visually identify "hot spots"—areas where visitors spent the most time—and "cold spots," pinpointing less engaging displays or potential bottlenecks.

  • Real-time Operational Intelligence: Crucially, Ortus AI delivered sub-second CCTV visual to real-time data collection. This meant the gallery staff had immediate access to live visitor metrics, empowering them to make on-the-spot decisions regarding crowd management, staffing, and even dynamic content adjustments.

The Impact: A Smarter, More Engaging Gallery

With Ortus AI's solutions, the SARJEANT Gallery gained unprecedented visibility into its operations and visitor experience. The project yielded significant benefits:

  • Enhanced Exhibition Optimization: Data on dwell times and foot traffic allowed the gallery to identify the most engaging exhibits, informing future curatorial decisions and optimizing layouts for maximum impact.

  • Improved Visitor Flow & Safety: Real-time crowd monitoring enabled proactive management of congested areas, ensuring a smoother and safer experience for all visitors.

  • Data-Driven Marketing: Understanding visitor demographics empowered the gallery to refine their marketing strategies, targeting specific age groups or genders with tailored campaigns.

  • Operational Efficiencies: Accurate people counting and heat maps allowed for smarter resource allocation, optimizing staffing levels and maintenance schedules based on actual visitor patterns.

  • Deeper Audience Understanding: The gallery now possesses a rich, data-driven understanding of how visitors interact with their art and space, fostering a more responsive and impactful cultural environment.

Custom Exhibition and arts work counting zones in real time.

Visitors viewing artwork in an art museum gallery, with labels indicating different historical art zones from the 17th to 19th centuries.

For exhibition artists and curators, this system was invaluable: it provided precise data on how many people viewed specific artworks and the duration of their engagement, broken down by hour, day, week, and month. This granular information was incredibly valuable for artists to understand their audience and for the gallery's marketing team to generate compelling data for promotional materials and future exhibition planning. Our system also allowed for multiple zone configuration with a single CCTV visual feed, maximizing efficiency and minimizing hardware needs

Architectural floor plan of a building showing three zones (Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3), with various rooms, hallways, stairs, and entry points, including detailed measurements and structural elements.

Customized Floor plan design, counting and traffic flow in Sub-second delivery from CCTV to Dashboard

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