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Google Art Project Brings Galleries To Your PC
Zothecula writes "Google has announced a collaboration with 17 of the world's most acclaimed art museums that lets people view over 1,000 high res-artwork images and 17 gigapixel images while taking a virtual stroll through their galleries using Street View technology. While nothing can beat seeing a work of art in person, the Google Art Project could be the next best thing for those without the time and money to pop on a plane and trade elbows with crowds of tourists looking to catch a glimpse of what some of the best museums have on offer."
I swear, many years ago, Bill Gates and his "Corbis" company went around buying ALL the digital reproduction rights to millions of artworks in museums all over the globe. Perpetual, never-ending rights, in exchange for a one-time payment. So what happened to that?
Only rich people can afford to get airplane tickets, book a hotel room for a few days oversea and skip work just to go see some paintings.
And don't give me crap about where I live. Half of the families in Canada earn less than 15$K per year, and that's with the 1 Canadian dollar = 1.01204 U.S. dollars
of today.
Gee, what are the chances that the servers serving up these 17 GPixel images are already slashdotted?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
While nothing can beat seeing a work of art in person....
I disagree wholeheartedly here. If Google, or someone else, can, one day, download the world's most famous art projects directly into my visual, auditory, olfactory, and other sensory lobes in my brain, that would beat the hell out of traveling through the meatspace to see a piece of art in person. I know we're not there yet, but we're chugging forward baby steps at a time. So yeah, nostalgia and all that says that a visit to The Louvre is a life-changing experience, blah blah blah.
But frankly, I don't have the time or patience to deal with the hordes of gawking art patrons at a museum. So yeah, Google, keep up the work (along with everyone else bringing information to the masses). One day, when I can press a button on my phone, and have my brain light up like it just saw Mona Lisa in person, then I certainly will proclaim that such an experience beats the hell out of actually seeing that painting in person.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Is Google going to provide links the gift shops at these museums too?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Hope it comes up "for those without the time and money to pop on a plane and trade elbows with crowds of students looking to catch a glimpse of what some of the best schools have on offer"...
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
While I'm sure that Gigapixel images are great for pixel-peeping, they don't seem all that useful given the available real-estate on a standard computer monitor (around 1680 x 1050 these days). I'm not sure what great advantage the extra pixels do over a well-constructed JPEG or TIFF for viewing the artwork as a whole -- as it was intended to be viewed.
Not to mention that most computers would drag to a halt moving around an image that large.
I don't really understand art. I would like to. These museums picked these paintings for a reason, and it goes beyond "they look pretty". (Some of 'em don't.)
I know that art requires context. How do these paintings relate to the culture they were painted in, the other paintings that were made at the same time, the paintings that came before?
I could, presumably, google them, and that would be a nice neutral answer. This is just the first step, and perhaps there's some API that will allow curators to include the high-res Google images in with whatever technique they use to provide context. Every museum is different, of course, and some will simply want to ignore the distractions while others would like a guided tour.
But on it's own, the technical feat of producing these images intrigues me as an engineer, but the paintings themselves are just fodder for screen wallpaper. I don't want to be a philistine, but somebody will have to help me out here.
It's projects like this that remind me of the power of technology. It's easy to get caught up in using and following technology that's used for efficiency and productivity in the workplace. Losing sight of the human connection is common, art forgotten. Project's like Google's Art endeavor breathe life into tech world. Three Cheers for Google!
- Anything that can be put in a nutshell should remain there.
This is very cool tech. I went to the Uffizi and zoomed in on Venus' boob until it filled the screen. Then I noticed all the brush work on the (strategically placed) hand and saw how Botticelli had subtly shifted the placement of the fingers as he painted. Would be very cool if they could add an X-Ray overlay.
Thanks a lot Google - I went looking for 15th-Century nudie picks but instead I ended up learning something.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Having seen several works by the major impressionists in person, I can say that no 2D rendering of a truly great painting can do it justice, no matter how high the resolution. Looking at a Van Gogh, for example, the paint depth in the brush strokes can be up to a centimeter thick, and this depth interactes with the light in person in a way that you can't capture in a 2D image. Which is not to say the whole thing isn't still really cool.
Keep passing the open windows...
Off topic.
But I'm seeing the same thing, especially following a link in an email to a specific reply.
Drag the slider any direction, and it seems to magically fix it. But you have to do this each time
you follow a link to a specific post. Very annoying. And don't even try to move that slider on
an Android device.
There is a control for re-parenting in the settings or account page that got checked even
without me doing so.
It seems the bugs are taking an awfully long time to get fixed. You would thing they would
work on the big ticket items first.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Sometimes not even that. I wish I could say that all those sculptures and paintings of naked women were purely for aesthetic appreciation of the human body, but that really wasn't the case. Outside of church frescoes, most paintings fall into one of the categories of immortalizing oneself (portraits) or essentially softcore porn. All that was different is essentially the social contract that it's ok to look at naked women if you pretend it's a representation of Venus ;)
The age of masturbating another part of your body, as you aptly put it, only came much later and is largely a recent phenomenon.
Kinda puts it in perspective, I think. I wouldn't be surprised if, assuming one could get cryogenically frozen until the year 3000 like in Futurama, in a future museum one would hear the guide going, "And to the left we have Larry Flint's unnamed recently-discovered masterpiece, which we tentatively call 'Venus with still life up the ass'" ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
google: http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/vangogh/the-bedroom iipimage: http://merovingio.c2rmf.cnrs.fr/iipimage/showcase/zoom.php?path=%2Fbaie3%2Fpyr-F5%2FF5702%2FHD3%2FHD3_pyr_000_090.tif The problem is that we don't have their money! :(
I'm waiting for Google Brothel ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Funny enough I submitted this very idea to google about a year ago. I submitted it as a project improvement since its damn near impossible to find an idea submission avenue. I got the idea after using Google street view to take a virtual tour of the Pompeii ruins (I highly recommend checking them out, super cool). So, I sent in a suggestion that they could do something similar with museums around the world, thus allowing people to visit exhibits they may never get to see face to face. I wonder if my submission helped spur on the idea? I never got any kind of response. I'm not really worried about money, I'd just like to know if my suggestion actually gained traction, or if there were a ton of other submissions or what. I can't wait to see how far they take it. I'd love to see it extended to other places. Super cool :)
This is just so cool, I'm not a fan analyzing art but, I like visiting museums because of the amount of detail I can see in an artwork. Well I just zoomed in and saw some extremely fine paint strokes in one of the museums. This gets my utterly worthless approval.
Yeah. Off-topic. That's another thing: /. has no space for a community meta-discussion. Wii game forums have those things, for chrissake.
...that lets people view over 1,000 high res artwork images and 17 gigapixel images while taking a virtual stroll through their galleries using Street View technology.
Doesn't it seem a bit irresponsible on the part of the museums to let those VW Bugs drive around their hallways?
This guy's the limit!
Two things, one a better analogy might have been Frank Lloyd Wright built lots of buildings, some were significant for techniques used, like the Earthquakeproof Imperial Hotel in Japan, floated on a bed of mud with stilts going down to bedrock. Leon Moisseiff designed the Manhattan Bridge and inspired the Golden Gate bridge, both fine examples of the craft but Engineers might pay more attention to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, also a Moisseiff design.
I took a quick peek at the Met's walkaround from Goolge, they need more pixels, don't let the Gigapixel nonsense fool you.
Also I wish they'd offerred a peek at the Armor collection, or maybe I just haven't crab-walked my way around the museum far enough yet.
when a decent slideshow would do. I could care less what the gallery looks like but the Streetview interface is lousy for this purpose.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
In the Frick Collection in the East Gallery there is a painting blurred out. Was wondering why?
That's because of all the time Wii gamers have to kill between good games are released. :-)
I vote lazy. I'm an engineer and have created art since I was a kid. Even sold a few pieces over the years. So there. :-P
I would love a MythTV plugin for this... I've been slowly amassing hi-res images to put on our livingroom TV as a slow slideshow for when we have people over... I'd been looking for a trove of good resolution fine 'art' ...
I would love a MythTV plugin for this... I've been slowly amassing hi-res images to put on our livingroom TV as a slow slideshow for when we have people over... I'd been looking for a trove of good resolution fine 'art' ...
http://www.haltadefinizione.com/home.jsp?lingua=en from http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10/02/1415229/Masterpieces-Online-mdash-High-Culture-At-High-Resolution but I dunno how easily you'll be able to grab the images. Or, indeed, remove the watermarking
should be called Googleheim.
Balderdash!
How about Norton Simon, Philadelphia, etc.?
I wonder if these virtual museums will make more people go to the museums.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Clearly, the shelf space factor weighs heavily in favor of Google. But for viewing, I prefer looking at a wide book. A computer screen is just too bright for most works of art. Maybe color e-ink technology will get us closer in the coming years.
Neither a book nor a set of screen images is a satisfactory replacement for seeing the original work in a museum.
When I'm at a museum, I can't help wonder why is this not a web site??
I mean, all an art museum is is a way to display pictures to the public, but in a phenomenally expensive and impractical way, compared to HTML.
I realize this field is slow to change and that display quality can still improve slightly, but in the medium term this is inevitable.
At least to the extent the attraction of museums is to display these pictures. When it comes to letting visitors be near the objects that celebrity artists have touched, nothing will change.
Whilst walking through a museum a la streetview, the "t" key will toggle between normal streetview and red/green stereo mode of old.
After the book debacle, I'd be surprised if Google are giving the museums anything at all.