Category Archives: art

21st century learning, art

Prado in Google – a closer look at art

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[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=D1EOJr11bvo]

Viewing a Velasquez or a Rembrandt in a place like Spain’s Prado museum is a unique experience. Now you can use Google Earth technology to navigate reproductions of the Prado’s masterpieces, delving even deeper into the Prado’s collection. In Google Earth, you can get close enough to examine a painter’s brushstrokes or the craquelure on the varnish of a painting. The images of these works are about 14,000 million pixels, 1,400 times more detailled than the image a 10 megapixel digital camera would take. In addition, you’ll be able to see a spectacular 3D reproduction of the museum.

You can have this exquisite experience in Google Maps. There are 3 paintings you can currently view here, with a new painting a day after that for the next two weeks. I zoomed into Bosch’s ‘The garden of earthly delights’ and saw some very strange things happening in detail.

If you visit the Prado museum in Spain through Google Earth like I did, you’ll be able to view paintings in high resolution, as I did when I clicked on Goya’s ‘The 3rd of may’.  Here’s what it says once you get there:

We present a virtual tour of fourteen masterpieces from the Museo Nacional del Prado, displayed in ultra high resolution, enabling you to see details of the paintings that have never been seen before. Thanks to the high resolution of the digital images, you can view the whole painting or zoom in on a small fragment. Given the plethora of masterpieces housed at the Museum, choosing which works to include was no easy task but this selection represents the best of the collection.

What a way to learn; you can zoom into these works of art from wherever you are.

Jonathan Jones has a great art blog on guardian.co.uk has an interesting post with the pros and cons of this virtual art gallery.

I’ll get off now so you can get on with the virtual trip.  Have fun.

21st century learning, art, creativity, Web 2.0

Guggenheim 2.0

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The Guggenheim Museum in NY has a great little online event going which encourages interaction and collective thought around some of its collection. 

Catherine Opie is an American artist specialising in issues around documentary photography.

For this exhibition, Catherine Opie has selected images from the Guggenheim Museum’s photography collection and organized them into three sections: Self-Portraits, Landscapes, and Portraits. Visitors can write responses to the questions Opie poses about them and read other people’s responses.

Here are some more details from the Guggenheim Museum website:

September 26, 2008–January 7, 2009
While celebrated for her role behind the camera, Catherine Opie remains acutely aware of the voices of her subjects, and the diverse readings all images engender. Exploring this circuit of interpretation, Opie has selected images from the Guggenheim Museum’s photography collection to present alongside questions about the works’ themes and meanings, inviting museum visitors to respond with stories of their own.

People can participate online by writing about a photograph or reading other people’s comments.

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I clicked on one of the portraits.

3infrontofcar

 These are the questions asked about the portraits:

What do you think makes a portrait interesting?

  • How do the titles of these photographs make you think differently about the people they portray?
  • Some of these images are made spontaneously while others are carefully staged by the artist. How does this difference in approach affect your response?

Here is one of the responses:

An interesting portrait to me is one that represents people honestly. Not only is it usually aesthetically pleasing, but it also is educational and interesting. In Keita’s photo of 3 women, she presents them in their usual daily clothing, telling the viewer something about their environment and status, and then the juxtaposition of the car brings to mind a completely different world or environment. The two together represent a very real albeit somewhat staged composition that’s intriguing and interesting.

I was excited to find this, and I’d like to keep up with the many innovative programs and ideas coming out of cultural institutions such as museums. The idea of  an artist selecting images from the collection is a creative way to bring out to more people what would normally remain within the walls of the museum, and perhaps not be accessed by as many otherwise. The addition of the questions and options to comment is added value,  inviting interaction and the sharing of opinions. I also like the fact that, whereas people would normally just look at the photos at an exhibition, maybe read a little about them, in this case the public is invited to express their impressions and opinions.

I was a little disappointed that only one or two responses were accessible, unless I’m missing something. I was looking forward to a real discussion and debate around the photos.

Nevertheless, an inspiring concept. This would be an excellent way to initiate discussion and reflection in the art classroom.

art, creativity, language, photos, play, technology, Web 2.0, writing

PicLits

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piclit-1

I thought I’d try out PicLits: inspired picture writing.

PicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.

I wasn’t that pleased with my first effort, so I tried another one.

piclit2

Well, unless I’ve missed something, the list of words is limited. Then again, I haven’t read the instructions, just had a go.  I think there’s something to be said for adding text to a picture from a limited supply. The challenge is to work with what you’ve got, thinking about the position of the words, whether you want a sparse message or story, or whether you want a more crowded and descriptive text. 

Definitely much to play with either in English, foreign language or English as a Second Language classes.

I almost forgot to thank Tom Barrett for this application, and if you go to this post you’ll find 9 other digital writing opportunities.

art, Education, photos, Web 2.0

Open mind

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I thought I’d try Phrasr using the phrase ‘ Minds are like parachutes; they only function when they are open’.

Phrasr allows you to choose flickr images for each word in a phrase.

See it here.

parachutes

Photo by Fikirbaz

It’s probably not the best phrase to use, since some of the words don’t really match the pictures. Still, I can see students having fun with the image choices here. I like the idea of playing with a quote, and dressing it up with images. Students could use quotes from Shakespeare, for example. It would be a good way to remember difficult quotes.

Actually, it works much better if you omit pictures for the insignificant words, eg. prepositions and articles.

Some ideas for the phrase are: proverb, quotation (eg. from a poem, song, Shakespeare), alliterative phrase, colour-coded phrase, nonsense phrase. Limitless possibilities, really.

Here’s an example of a nonsense phrase.

Here’s an alliterative one.

Here’s one from Shakespeare (Macbeth, I think)

If you have made any Phrasr examples, I’d love you to share them.

art, play, Remarkable

Optical illusion – inside the painting

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw-IB9GpmY4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

I found this on Futility Closet – Dick Termes paints murals on spheres with a special 6-point perspective. The idea is that, as you watch the scene rotating, you imagine it to be painted on a concave interior. Two things happen: the spin reverses direction and suddenly you’re inside the painting.