I recently discovered Google's latest best-kept secret and decided that it was worth sharing for all who haven't seen it yet. It's called the Google Art Project, which can be easily found by typing that into Google, and even in its relatively early stages this has enormous potential to transform our experiences with art.
The initiative capitalizes on Google's sphere of social and technological influence to document thousands of works of art from hundreds of museums around the world. The artworks have been scanned in at high resolutions to zoom in on every detail, and they are also catalogued with information about the artist and a brief history of the work.
The real innovation of this website, however, lies in its interactive format. Using the same technology found in Google StreetView, users can tour the participating museums through virtual walk-throughs, which are paired with a floor plan of the current museum level. The website allows users to navigate their own path through the galleries, stopping where they choose as the artworks emerge in the same physical space they actually occupy. While "moving" through the space, one can click on any artwork within view, bringing up a larger, high-res image of the work.
While this may seem as the next logical step in Google's goal of digitally mapping our entire world, it also expands that vision into something larger: meaningful interaction with the things in our world. In this instance, we are no longer hovering above the earth, or even strolling down neighborhood streets; we are given access to priceless works of art along with information about them, such that we are no longer merely voyeurs, but participants who can engage with real artifacts.
Such technology could be criticized for trying to replace or displace actual museum visitors, but I see this having the opposite effect. I believe granting this kind of access to artworks, and letting us see them in their actual environments, only heightens interest as well as encourages us to interact more, and thereby see more, and thereby learn more. In this way, the Art Project has the capacity to build up some hype on a public scale and get us interested in things and places we may not have even known about. It's the same reason people go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa: we already know it and what it looks like, but we still want to see it for ourselves. The same is true for New York, or any great city, that we've all seen on TV and in movies: we feel familiar with it from a distance, and this only encourages our interest to experience it in person.
I am also interested in the architectural capacity of this website in having virtual experiences of the built environment. While there are obvious limitations to what can, or should, be documented publicly, museums are a great jumping-off point if Google were to start building a repository of online buildings and spaces. Museums are important cultural icons within a city for sure, but have also served as ideal types for architects to push the creative and technical boundaries of our discipline with radical new designs, specifically in the past couple of decades. Instead of just flipping through magazines and photos of floor plans, I am excited by the possibility of getting to wander through these spaces that I may otherwise never get to, and believe there is enormous potential for students and teachers to learn through such an interactive model.
It'll be interesting to see how far Google pushes this initiative and whether they will take this concept to other institutions, such as churches, universities, or libraries. While it seems almost inevitable right now, I hope it's also done thoughtfully. Once the "exterior" world has been fully mapped, it only makes sense that we would move on to capturing interior environments, along with hyperlinks to the things in those environments. It might just open the door to a new realm of shared experiences, even if we share them from our desks.
Ryan
No comments:
Post a Comment