Mattebox’s design puts all the usual SLR features on your touch screen.

LOS ANGELES — As a photography lover, I’m always carrying around one or two cameras. There’s the camera on my phone and there’s a dedicated camera in my bag, often a light high-quality point and shoot. For big days, I often find myself stuffing my Canon Digital Rebel along with two lenses, a flash and tripod into one bag, because despite its weight, an SLR system still provides the best clarity and manual features for serious photography.

With its new 5-8 megapixel camera, the iPhone is now competitive in clarity for most shots. But with just a few options to control flash and digital zoom, it’s lacking in terms of manual features. Mattebox, a new app from Chicago-based Ben Syverson, aims to solve this problem.

The explanation video is a little hokey — “My goal was simple: I wanted to create the photographer’s mobile camera.” — but it does a great job of explaining the app’s features, inspired by the iconic Konica Hexar. Using the iPhone’s touch screen, it simulates all the functions of a professional SLR, with manual ISO, white balance and exposure. The site’s gallery features some of the stunningly clear, precise shots possible with the app (though the corresponding Flickr group shows that quality varies widely by photographer).

At $3.99, the app costs slightly more than Hipstamatic and Instagram, but substantially less than the average SLR. While you can’t try out a free version, you can fiddle with a simulation on the site.

Mattebox is no SLR-killer but combined with the retina display it will certainly have me thinking twice about lugging around my larger camera everywhere I go.

A screen shot of the Guggenheim's Cattelan app in installation view.

MANILA, Philippines — Over the past few months, I’ve watched with envy as stunning museum shows have gone up in my old haunts in Los Angeles and New York. Back in the US, I could easily have popped into the respective museums and seen the shows themselves. Instead, I’m left with websites, reviews and tweets to relive the experience of seeing the show in person.

Thankfully, in recent months three museums have released exhibition-related apps for smartphones and the iPad. Unlike iPod-enhanced guided tours, the apps are designed as standalones. They could be used to tour the website and interact with the exhibits, but they can also be used as a casual guide, to be viewed far from the institution. And unlike a website, these apps can be carried around and shared with friends or even in a classroom.

The ultimate test, of course, is how the iOS adds value over a standard site. Is it simply a website or catalogue in your iPad, or is it something unique to the interface? To see how they stack up, I reviewed three apps (CA Design HD at LACMA, AB EX at MoMA, Cattelan at Guggenheim) in their iPad incarnations, but they’re also available for iPhone and iPod Touch.

CA Design HD / Los Angeles County Museum of Art

I’ll start with CA Design HD, the app released by LACMA for California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way, part of the statewide Pacific Standard Time going on right now in California.

The touch interface is an interactive education in historic California design, from important architects like Frank Lloyd Wright to industrial designers like the Eames Office and graphic designers like Deborah Sussman. Clicking and sliding through the app is simple and straightforward. Detail views let you see the designs in full, high-resolution glory. Professionally-produced designer interviews, which require an internet connection, add a personal touch and offer insight into the thoughts of these high-minded creators.

I like the potential of the Google Maps interface in this app. Those curious about the show can zoom in and pan around the state of California to see the location of the different designers and offices featured (not surprisingly, the majority are in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas). I’d like this feature a lot more if I could get directions or share the map on Twitter or via email, but the sharing features across the app point simply to the exhibition’s main web site, not to individual items.

Overall, the app is easy to use and very informative, a great overview of design in California. And it’s free.

AB EX NY / Museum of Modern Art

MoMA's AB EX NY's landing page (left) and image detail (right). Image from MoMA.org.

The Abstract Expression New York app put out by MoMA accompanied on the show that just ended a few months ago (though since all of the works are in the museum’s permanent collection many are currently on view in the permanent galleries), and it’s part of a series of apps MoMA has been developing.

Immediately, the app presents a more tablet-like interface, with paintings hung on a large, virtual wall. Their sizes are relative to each other: Pollock’s 7’x7’ “Echo: Number 25, 1951″ appears much larger than Franz Kline’s 11 x 9” “Untitled II.” It’s easy to pan around (but not pinch and zoom) to different works and click on them for more information. Unlike CA Design, however, most of the information is sparse: we glean only basic dimensions and materials information.

AB EX makes up for this with a broad selection of audio features that explain certain works. Some seminal pieces, like de Kooning’s “Woman, I,” feature full descriptive text and audio. As with CA Design, a map feature allow us to see where the different artists worked in Manhattan, and an Art Terms section helps us understand some of the technical language, from “allover painting” to “turpentine burn.” And the social feature lets us share specific paintings on Twitter and Facebook — a feature that may have been more useful a few months ago when the show was up, as a number of the images have since been taken down.

With a tablet friendly landing page and embedded social features, AB EX NY comes close to giving us a museum experience. And it’s also free.

Cattelan HD / Guggenheim Museum

The cover of Cattelan's Toilet Paper, which can be viewed on the iPad app.

Cattelan HD was released for Maurizio Cattelan’s All retrospective, the much-discussed installation currently up at the Guggenheim. I remember seeing photos of the show online, with all of Cattelan’s works suspended from the ceiling. I asked myself, “How on earth does that work?” It’s a puzzling, challenging exhibition that I would be thrilled to see in person.

Though I’ve never been to the show, Cattelan HD comes pretty close to recreating the experience. The “Works on View” section presents the entire installation from top to bottom. I can’t pinch and zoom, and it’s a little buggy when sliding through. I want to be able to rotate the installation in real time, and see it from above and below, but I’m left to slide to four different pre-determined angles.

Despite these snafus, it’s a lovely interface that does the best job of making the museum experience come to life in my hands. I can see each work hanging in physical space, and I can zoom out to see the full installation and details. I simply need to click on item for an overview, which presents complete curatorial texts about the piece. Many also come with a brief audio or even video clip, and alternative views of the objects.

The app features a slew of videos, though all require a wi-fi connection. The most interesting of the videos focus on the logistics of the installation. Additional sections include interviews with those who worked with Cattelan, and an overview of actions and projects. The “Toilet Paper” section is perhaps the most fitting for the iPad format — it recreates Cattelan’s new magazine in rich detail and color.

At $3.99, Cattelan HD is the only one of these apps that comes with a price tag, but it’s a steal for such an in-depth look at the artist’s oeuvre. It is also available for Android.

Overall, I’m happy to see apps being developed for such major shows. Considering the amount of work necessary, it may not be reasonable to expect museums to create a full mobile application for all exhibitions on top of the web site and catalogue but it is certainly desirable.

I spoke with Beth Levy, who directs publications at the Guggenheim. In describing the Cattelan app, she summed up what makes these programs so useful:

Through videos with conservators, fabricators and engineers, visitors or users of the app have a better understanding of how the installation was created and the works were hung. And for those who cannot visit the show, the photos and videos on the installation allow users to have an idea of what it would be like to experience the installation in the museum though we understand that it will not replace an actual visit.

I’ll take a controversial stand and say these apps should probably cost something. I believe access to arts education should be free, but that’s what web sites and libraries are for. Anyone who can afford an iPhone can certainly afford to shell out $5 to support museums (ideally Apple would take less of a cut too). But along with that, hopefully more apps will be self-contained, i.e., not require a wifi connection for content. It would feel strange to pay for an app that’s useless without an online connection, and it would be nice to be able to browse such a rich resource while sitting on a plane or anywhere else with limited wi-fi.

Putting shows into a mobile format better mimics the casual museum viewing experience than a website, and that’s a good thing. These apps can be a handheld visit for those who are unable to attend the shows, and they complement the visitor experience for those who want more.

What do you think? Have you used these apps on the iPad or iPhone? Are there other apps museums have developed that you’ve found particularly helpful?

All the app reviewed in this post are available online. Here are some direct links to iTunes: Design California, Abstract Expressionist New York and Cattelan.

Fashion designer Valentino Garavani's virtual museum (photo via pinkmemo.com)

It’s a testament to the time in which we live to be able to walk through the brilliant halls of a white-walled, glass ceilinged exhibition hall, quietly perusing couture from one of the masters of modern fashion, Valentino Garavani, all in front of a computer screen.

This Monday saw the launch of the esteemed designer’s archives in a virtual museum, unlike any other I’ve seen: a beautifully designed, 10,000 square meter space open 24/7, allowing you to freely roam and consume a variety of fashion at your own pace.

Upon entering the museum and seeing a beautifully cut scarlet coat from his A/W 1965/66 Haute Couture collection suspended in a red glass cube, it’s painfully aware that you’re in for a pleasurable experience, if you stay for two seconds or three hours like me (I should bill Valentino for the hours of work I lost to examining red dresses.)

The museum is divided up into several halls, from “Muses & Friends” to “The Other Half.” In the “Themes & Variations” gallery one can spend hours looking at numerous gowns: floral, pleated, satin and crepe masterpieces standing on an immense white staircase reminiscent of old MGM movie musical sets. “The Library” is an amazing resource, documenting over 5,000 images of dresses as well as corresponding sketches, runway shots and editorials.

The museum’s creation is credited to Valentino’s longtime colleague Giancarlo Giammetti, who worked with the designer for two years to bring a lifetime’s worth of work to your fingertips.

Of course, something is lost in translation. It’s difficult not to feel you’re missing out on seeing the drape of the fabric, the loose threads at the hem, the glow of satin against the light and every other physical delight one can normally experience when viewing fashion. Still, it’s an amazing archive and an amazing way to experience an artist’s oeuvre.

Why is Mixel different? First off, it’s attractive and easy to use. Within minutes I was already finding friends (you have to log in using Facebook) and remixing other people’s images. Within 10 minutes of downloading the app I had already tweeted out my first Mixel-facilitated image — that’s pretty fast even by app standards. Second of all, it’s very social, making it easy to share, comment and like other people’s images.

My "Updates" screen today.

There are some privacy and attribution concerns I immediately had when I started to use the app, including the fact that you are forced to sign in using Facebook and allowing the app to access a lot of information as a default setting, but the more serious artistic issue is one of attribution and copyright. I’m not a fan of strict copyright but I am a big fan of image attribution and credit for image creators. Sadly, there’s no way to link an image to its original source using Mixel, actually you don’t even see what URL or webpage the image was pulled from in the first place.

Searching the web for images is super easy with Mixel. (screenshot by the author) (click to enlarge)

I wonder if an app like Mixel may have artists of all types locking down their images in a way that can’t be accessed by a search engine. There is web image search capabilities [see image to the left] that quickly and easily (too easily?) pulls images off the internet with not permalink or original source. It’s getting a little irritating that every new image-based web startup seems to be in a race to find a way to strip images of their origins.

Tumblr is the most famous example of a service that allows users to capture images from the web and post or reblog them as if they were their own. That’s not to say that the same issue was not a problem with Flickr and older image-sharing services but Tumblr seemed to almost encourage attribution-less image sharing. Tumblr has remedied the situation somewhat with the “content source” box but even then images frequently appear elsewhere without credits or sources, all you have to do is reupload them. Mixel feels the same, it’s teasing you with a “don’t worry, just use it, nevermind where you got it” feel.

Unlike drawing, the skill level to create a simple (and potentially successful) collage is much lower, which isn’t to say that anyone can make a good collage but when has that stopped anyone anyway? This makes Mixel ripe for mass consumption. Need to make a quick graphic? Need a library of potential “clip art”? This is the place to go. Within days of launching there is already an impressive array of imagery to choose from, though no clear way to search them effectively. I can only imagine what will happen within a year or two.

The freedom allowed by a program like Mixel also makes it attractive and I will admit that the nature of traditional collage (ripping images or words from newspapers or magazines) isn’t exactly well suited for attribution, but hopefully the developers will eventually find a way to link images back to their source.

My playing around with Mixel at work.

After creating a collage you can share it using the usual suspects (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr *ahem*, email) or open it in Safari or save it locally in your photo albums. I tested the shareability by posting an image to Tumblr and it looks a-ok.

The ability to like and comment on collages are nice but as the program is limited to iPads the community that develops around this will be small until the iPad becomes ubiquitous. It is possible to see the posted Mixel images online even without an iPad but, like other new image sharing services, think Instagram (which barely has a public website), it’s not ideal.

The image editing capabilities on Mixel are simple (cropping is outlined with your finger, image layers can be brought front or back, images can be rotated, etc.) but there are some things I wish it had. Here are a few immediate like-to-haves:

• a magic wand that allows me to grab an area that I can’t outline clearly with my finger
• a way to inverse the selection (so I grab everything but what I selected)
• a way to color edit images
• a way to create animated GIFs
• an easier way to organize layers
• an easy way to search available images based on content or color (what if I’m looking for the perfect mushroom cloud to use?)

Having said all these fabulous things, I will say that the app did crash on me once today. At one point I got a blank gray slate with no ability to do anything so I simply deleted and redownloaded the app — problem solved but still irritating.

Now, raise your hand if you’re waiting for the first Mixel art exhibition? I wonder if they’ll be anything like the first Instagram shows?

Introducing Mixel for iPad from Mixel App on Vimeo.

Still from Patrick Smith's “Windosill” (via windosill.com)

Artist Patrick Smith’s Windosill, a Flash-based video game that’s playable in your internet browser, is a fascinating work both for its slow, subtle game play and its visual inspirations, namely Greek-Italian proto-Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico’s empty landscapes and American Philip Guston’s still-life paintings, inspirations that the artist acknowledged in an interview with Kill Screen.

Just as Guston and de Chirico endowed still objects with their own inner life, so painter and video game designer Patrick Smith takes everyday surroundings and tweaks them into interactive sculptures.

In the first scene of Windosill, what at first appears to be an abstract array of objects turns out to be a child’s bedroom shelf with the click of an interactive light. A wooden toy train is the player’s only avatar, its only goal to move through the right-side door of each level.

Giorgio de Chirico, “The Disquieting Muses” (1918) (image via manolobig.com)

What Smith does that echoes de Chirico’s work is to fill these empty spaces, often reminiscent of empty shelves or the insides of already-opened boxes, with a strange pathos, a heavy emotional atmosphere. Drenched in a cool array of blues, greens and grays, Smith’s game feels like a quiet dream, subdued if not sad, much the same feeling that de Chirico’s empty staircases and colonnades summon in me.

Guston’s brushy still lifes — made up of anthropomorphized objects from the artist’s studio, paintbrushes, pallets, easels, a cot — come in with Smith’s careful Flash animation of each tiny jewel of a stage in Windosill. Where Guston shows his objects’ inner lives with energetic brushwork and a vibrating anxiety, Smith lets his creations move with unnerving smoothness, often following the player’s path through the game with inanimate eyes.

I love that Smith can create this bristling sense of unease even in a game that’s small in scale and cartoony in delivery. No matter how far you progress in Windosill‘s levels, the same emotions create a rich background to the game’s simple puzzles — the feeling of laying in bed as a child, wondering what’s hidden in the closet, out the window or under the covers.

Engblom's “wShare” (image via thestate.tumblr.com)

Online exhibition space The State has a new show up. This time, it’s Jacob Broms Engblom‘s “wShare,” a fetishization of those internet moments when we’re just caught doing nothing but waiting. The piece evokes everything from downloading albums on Rapidshare-like services to staring at a slow loading bar.

A simple splash screen with the sans-serif words “Tired of Waiting?” splayed across the center and a countdown clock below, “wShare” is classic internet art — an economy of means produces a maximum effect. The page’s background and font color slowly, surreally shifts through a range of slightly nauseating combos of colors. When the timer runs out, a “download” button pops up at the bottom.

What’s waiting for you isn’t a .RAR file of pirated tunes or a ripped DVD, but a .BIN file of code mimicking the website. The work turns the waiting process into an experience itself, not unlike Andy Warhol’s embrace of the “boring” in his 8-hour long Empire film. The slowly shifting colors barely hold the viewers attention, but we’re still stuck in an implacable compulsion to see what happens when the timer runs out. Maybe this time it’ll do something different?

Screenshot of Engblom's “wShare” (capture by author)

“wShare” also embraces the unique aesthetic of the mass-upload site, from its name to its browser tab logo. Playing off the looks of sites like Megaupload and Yousendit, “wShare” has a miniature logo of a swooping arrow, curving around and pointing back down. It’s dynamic without meaning anything, a subconscious echo of those earlier internet experiences with actual upload sites — it’s actually appropriated wholly from Rapidshare.com. Having “wShare” open in my browser, more than a few times I’ve mistook it for an open Rapidshare window and clicked through for a download.

Though “wShare” does succeed in re-emphasizing the process of waiting online, the countdown clock a more recent equivalent to a log-on dial tone, it doesn’t go very far in aestheticizing the experience. It’s a minimal piece, but not austere or conceptually complicated enough to not look a little bit dated. One of my favorite parts of the piece — the mini tab logo — is much more finished than the site itself, though its appropriated. It seems like “wShare” could be improved by sticking closer to its sources. The work’s models usually tend toward the Baroque rather than the simple, with masses of loading bars and flashing ads, hallucinogenic in their own way.

Click and find out for yourself — is the waiting really worth it? Is the tedium the medium?

“wShare” by Jacob Broms Engblom is on view at The State.

Laurel Schwulst, “Selected Sunsets (#7)” (2010) (image via bubblebyte.org)

From ASCII sunsets to screen-flattened foliage, Artist Laurel Schwulst makes parks for the internet. In a temporary exhibition called Proposals For Future Parks shown on internet-based art space bubblebyte.org, the artist uses different media approaches, both online and off, to explore the abstract idea of a “park,” a loose term that for the artist might signify a constructed landscape that has been made for humans to experience. In this show of four parts, Schwurst designs parks that are meant to be experienced in the manner we are now most accustomed to — through screens, virtually and at a remove.

At once architectural propositions, thought exercises and internet works in themselves, Schwulst’s “Screens,” “Selected Sunsets,” “States” and “Meat” (all 2010) are arranged in a square grid frame on the exhibition landing page of bubblebyte.org. There’s no strict order to the works; visitors simply click a work’s title to open it in a pop-up window or click on a three word description below the titles to open a pop-up artist statement. At right is the exhibition’s description and schedule. Schwurst’s work will be online through April 28, at which point it will join the archive as a listing, not a live site.

Laurel Schwulst, “Screens” (2010) (image via bubblebyte.org)

Schwulst’s work investigates the relationship between nature and technology, namely the mediation of nature by technology. We have become so fluent in digital viewing, these works hint, that it’s no longer fitting to simply experience nature as it is. It’s not that nature no longer has any value; the problem becomes that organic nature alone doesn’t fit in with the technological aesthetic humanity has come to embrace. It’s the artist’s job to become that mediation between the organic and the inorganic: Schwurst provides our comfortable interface. This idea is most superficially apparent in “Screens,” an auto-animated slideshow of photos depicting rectangular sheets of glass on top of examples of “nature” — tree branches, leaves, grass, a rock wall.

“Screens” is fun, but it doesn’t go as far as other works in investigating the porous border between the natural and the digital. “States,” a Flash-based animation in which the black silhouettes of US states morph into one another, and “Meat,” a scanned steak meant to represent the landscape of an enormous park explorable virtually with the Google Maps API, are both more evocative. The visual vocabulary of “States” brings to mind state parks, abstract emblems of iconic geography, while the mapped meat becomes a fleshy micro- and macrocosm of the human body’s relationship to nature.

As a sculptural plan and digital-only work, “Selected Sunsets” is both the most resolved and most interesting piece in Proposals For Future Parks. Schwurst writes:

This park overlooks a faraway ocean, but is closed at sunset for the ten minutes it takes the sun to drop below the horizon line. During this time, viewers go to nearby viewfinders that translate the sunset into a more familiar language of selected bits, undulating from off to on.

Laurel Schwulst, “Meat” (2010) (image via bubblebyte.org)

The online manifestation of the piece is a series of animated sunsets rendered in ASCII, explorable by drop-down menu. As the black and white squares and characters shift and change, pixelated ocean landscapes become visible. By dragging the corner of the pop-up window, the landscape scales, becoming larger and abstracted, or smaller and more readable. The ASCII copy of the landscape is a remix of nature, an alternative rather than a cynical replacement. It’s only during the sunset that we experience the digital version; were the experience more mediated, the audience forcibly herded into viewing chambers, a different reading would be necessary. But as it is, Schwurst represents the transcendent natural landscape and the digitally-transcendent landscape as equals, the virtual and the physical existing symbiotically.

The interface between the virtual and the real is also a part of the exhibition context of Proposals For Future Parks. bubblebyte.org is a devoted art space that only exists virtually, but functions as a physical gallery would, mounting roughly monthly exhibitions. The idea of the online-only art space has been gaining steam lately, see an article by Paddy Johnson on the rise of virtual galleries, but spaces like bubblebyte.org and The State bring virtual galleries to a new level of conceptual finish. Distinct from artist sketchbooks like Space Slave Trade (NSFW) or Parker Ito and company’s paintfx.biz, these sites aren’t meant to host open-ended projects but to present work in a strictly defined context that proves very helpful for a good viewing experience. Editorial operations such as Rhizome or 429 often host artist projects, but still lack the gallery feel of sites wholly devoted to exhibition-hosting. Is this the internet equivalent of the white cube?

Proposals For Future Parks is on view at bubblebyte.org through April 28.

Sample poses from Pose Mania (screenshots by author from posemaniacs.com)

Count on Japanese software developers to bring us something so delightfully weird yet totally useful. Pose Maniacs is a website that serves as your very own personal figure drawing model, set to whatever pose you like for however long it takes, complete with anatomically correct musculature. The site is even downloadable as an iPhone app.

Choose your preferred figure drawing option, and you’re off. Pose Maniac’s homepage includes quick, 30-second unique pose sessions, figure silhouettes, a random pose viewer and “Hands for Drawing,” which contains a selection of 3D models detailing hands, feet and other body parts. Unfortunately, only “Hands for Drawing” lets you manipulate and rotate the figure on display while the full muscled figures are only available in static poses.

A hand model from “Hands For Drawing”

Clicking through the 30-second and random pose viewer sections of the site, the male and female figures stretch into a variety of poses, seen from behind while running into the blank distance, sitting on invisible benches and standing around nonchalantly. While they may not be the exact poses you’re looking for, each is a cool exercise in picturing the human figure. The somewhat grainy muscles are helpful for guidance, but not exactly educational in anatomical terms.

Designed for use by aspiring manga artists, the tools are perfectly useful for artists of any stripe needing a quick refresher in what a foot looks like foreshortened from the back or what the musculature of an upraised arm looks like. Users are able to draw diagrammatic lines on the figure as well as display a grid in the background. Who needs to cram a model into a badly heated loft when you can pick one up online?

I mean, I guess seeing the human body in real life helps, or something. Maybe the poetic play of light and shade doesn’t really come through on these 3D computer graphics. We all got our problems. At least there’s a tool out there for quick reference in a pinch.

James Gulliver Hancock's “Orchard Street” (detail) (all images from allthebuildingsinnewyork.blogspot.com)

Your day in poetically impossible tasks: New York-based illustrator James Gulliver Hancock pulls a Jason Polan in a new drawing project attempting to draw every building in our fair city, rendering townhouses and skyscrapers alike in day-glo colors and goofy, meandering lines equal parts charming and exact.

Hancock's “Five Leaves”

Through All the Buildings in New York, Hancock also takes wide detours through our home borough of Brooklyn and manages to catch a few buildings that we’re very familiar with– check out the artist’s version of Hyperallergic favorite Fives Leaves restaurant in Greenpoint. Hancock takes care to document the rough spots as well as the architectural high points of our surroundings, observing the poetry of silhouetted fire escapes as easily as the wall supports of a collapsing structure on Broadway and Reade.

It has to be said that Hancock’s blog is pretty much exactly like fellow illustrator and artist Jason Polan’s Every Person in New York, and if the project weren’t charming in itself it would feel like a ripoff. But Hancock gives us a handmade typology of buildings just as Polan gives us a cross-section of New York’s human population, the two coming together to form a bigger portrait of the city. It’s fun to notice famous people in Polan’s drawings, and it’s fun to recognize familiar buildings in Hancock’s. Both feel like artists sharing their view of the world and showing it in public, which is always a welcome and generous gesture.

Hancock does well in mixing up his medium, using blocks of solid color and paper cut-outs to provide alternative views of the architecture he covers. Like a photojournalist, it’s the artist’s eye that makes the difference between a mundane building and a striking drawing. He’s not afraid to get critical either: one drawing pits “decorative buildings” against “boring buildings” in a slap fight. Slightly reminiscent of a Hark a Vagrant comic, it’s pretty hilarious. We could all use more architectural cat fights in our lives.

Botticelli's “La Primavera (Spring)” (1481-82) (image from googleartproject.com)

In another giant leap for art online, Google has released Art Project, a collaboration with a group of 17 international art museums, including New York’s own Metropolitan Museum, Frick Collection, and Museum of Modern Art, to put their collections online. But this isn’t just a rehash of some online slideshow. Museums participating in Art Project can be digitally toured in two ways: as a Google Street View-style walking trip through the physical museum itself, as well as an artwork-by-artwork tour, with masterpieces of museum collections viewable in a slick image window. Over 1,000 pieces by 486 artists are viewable in high resolution through the project.

A virtual tour is nothing new, but what makes these online art experiences innovative is not their concept, but their execution. Judged purely on the basis of the experience of viewing art online, Art Project comes out the clear winner of the recent crop of online art viewers. Here’s what Art Project does better than any other digital art viewer out there, from VIP Art Fair to Artlog to museum websites and online slideshows:

1. Well-Designed User Interface

Google has always excelled at simple interfaces, and Art Project is no different. A main window shows a view of the gallery space currently being visited or functions as the main view of the artwork under examination. An informative sidebar in easy to read white and orange on gray includes facts on what gallery a work is in, the layout of a museum or the historical details of an object, all without skipping a beat of loading time.

2. High-Resolution Images and Zooming

All of Art Project’s images are high resolution, but 17 lucky artworks received the deluxe treatment: “gigapixel” photography that exposes every last detail of a work for a grand total of 7 billion pixels. These iconic works were selected based on their reputation, but familiarly with the image doesn’t make zooming in on the impassioned impasto of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” (1889) at MoMA any less awesome. The level of detail in these larger images verges on the scientific, while the slightly-less high res normal images are good enough for us non-conservators. Zooming also works smoothly, loading an entire image in gradually more high resolution layers in a way far less jerky (yet more detailed) than VIP Art Fair’s viewer.

Detail shot from the “gigapixel” image of Van Gogh's “Starry Night” (1889) at MoMA (image from googleartproject.com)

3. Customizable, Shareable Collection Building

Art Project does online collection-building right. It’s simple and clear to push a single button and add a work of art to a custom-named collection that is immediately visible on a lower tool bar. There’s even an option to save specific detail shots of the works into your collection, a tool that will doubtless come in handy for professors. Collections are also easy to make public: a single link, much like saving a map in Google Maps, is all you need to share your collection with friends. In contrast, it wasn’t even possible to view VIP Art Fair without first signing up, much less see someone else’s collection.

4. Integrating 3D Gallery Space With Flat Images

Part of what makes most website-based art viewing so nondescript is its lack of any intimation of three-dimensional space. The art exists in a 2D plain the thickness of a pixel. Google’s interior-shooting cameras solve this lack of context. Traveling through the galleries by means of direction arrows, Art Project gives viewers a very physical sense of how large works are and how they are presented next to each other. Granted, the physical gallery has to exist first for this process to work, but it’s a huge step up from VIP Art Fair’s anonymous digital space.

Image of the Tate Gallery viewed from Art Project (screenshot by author)

5. Public Accessibility

Where other online art viewers exist as commercial products or as ways to sell the works they display, Google’s Art Project exists simply to be used and explored in whatever ways viewers see fit. It is easily viewable in a standard web browser, totally free and effortless to set up. Starting a collection account is easy given the omnipresence of Gmail accounts. This accessibility and transparency makes it possible to see Art Project as a public tool for education and research rather than as a product.

Any Downsides?

I can see this Art Project being used for any number of things: art history lessons, lectures, research or just for fun. Still, the system still lacks an attendant social network. What if this turned into the Yelp of artworks? Could we rate Botticelli over Chris Ofili, or the Tate over MoMA? Could we leave comments on a Caravaggio, creating an art critical forum open to an international community? The possibilities are endless. This is digital art at its vivid high point, at least for now.