HOME | | LIBRARY | | WEBPAC | | WEBCENTRAL | | F L LOEB CENTER | | ART DEPT
If you're in a browsing mood, you may also like to stop by the Newspapers section of the virtual Periodical Room.
What's Cool
- Barbie's History of Art
Cindy Sherman couldn't do it better.
- Bubbleviewer: Gallery in the Round
360x360-degree photography via Omnicam, a research project of Columbia University. Download the viewer software for something new under the sun in photographic perspective.
- Quondam: a Virtual Museum of Architecture
- "quondam... from the Latin: formerly, but also of the future . . . .
"Quondam is an altogether new type of architecture museum. First, as a virtual museum, Quondam possesses the power to act as a museum without the agency of a building, and it may be the first museum of architecture solely in cyberspace. Second, virtuality, that is, potential existence, defines the fundamental theme of Quondam's collection of 3-dimensional computer aided design (CAD) models, most of which represent unbuilt architectural designs.
"The objective of Quondam and its collection is, therefore, to manifest new virtual possibilities -- to enable 'visits' to buildings that do not exist, to compare the scale of any number of buildings side by side, to analyze specific building designs by taking their 'models' apart, and, perhaps, to learn something totally new by reassembling pieces of the 'models' in new ways."
"ITEM (Image TEchnology in Museums and art galleries) is an international resource of information about the planned and implemented uses, world-wide, of image databases and interactive multimedia intended to further the accessibility, knowledge and interest in European and world cultural heritage, particularly in relation to the visual arts (including photographs), museums, architecture and archaeology.ITEM collects and disseminates descriptive text (in English and language of original production) and technical information (in English only), together with production and publisher contact names and addresses relating to projects under development and completed published or museum-resident image database and interactive multimedia projects. These include projects developed by museums, cultural authorities and others for use as internal management and/or public point-of- information resources, projects that have been developed from these resources for subsequent publication and projects that have been designed from the outset specifically for commercial publication. "
"Project CHIO is the major project of the CIMI Consortium. It is a proof-of-concept that demonstrates solutions to the difficulties in achieving online access to cultural heritage information held in multiple databases independent of the hardware and software used to store the data or search for it. Its main value is in demonstrating how a standards-based approach enhances access to cultural heritage information.Activating the CHIO Demonstrator gives you access to a developing information resource on the theme of folk art. This resource will eventually consist of databases of museum object records, full texts, and bibliographic records. It also includes imagebases and online tools such as the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and ULAN (Union List of Artist Names). All of these are contributed by CIMI participating institutions."
The MESL project is a collaboration of seven collecting institutions and seven universities, defining the terms and conditions for the educational use of digitized museum images and related information. MESL participants are developing a model educational site license, testing and evaluating procedures for the collection and distribution of museums' digital images and information, and assessing the impact of this distribution, in both technical and economic terms.At the end of this experiment, which will run for two-academic years (until June 1997) the participants will propose a broadly-based system that could support ongoing distribution and educational use of museum images and text.
(formerly The Constantinople Project) "Over the past several years, Professor Ahmet Cakmak, of Princeton University's Department of Civil Engineering and Operations Research has undertaken the structural analysis, under earthquake loads, of the Hagia Sophia. The Hagia Sophia is a major museum (formerly church and mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, built by the Emperor Justinian during the 6th century AD. Professor Cakmak has sought to determine the susceptibility of the structure, specifically its large dome and arches, to collapse due to the earthquakes that often strike that part of the world. As an extension of that work into the architectural realm, he recently offered a class which studied Byzantine structures from a structural and art-historical perspective. One of the goals set forth in the class was for students to construct three-dimensional models of specific Byzantine structures utilizing the computer drafting software AutoCAD. This was the first step towards a long term goal of creating a full model of the topography of ancient Constantinople, with models of many Byzantine buildings in place. "
"Open Studio: The Arts Online is designed to serve as a laboratory for the exploration of the tools and techniques that will serve arts and cultural organizations as they prepare for the networked environment of the next century. The project will promote access to the Internet and to arts and cultural information through a two-part process:1.Creation of public points of access for artists and members of the interested public to be located in such public venues as arts organizations, libraries and community centers. Each identified site will receive a small award to establish public Internet access in their community.2.A community web mentoring program to provide arts organizations and individual artists the basic skills needed for online communications and electronic publishing. Designed to spread outward from an initial ten regional centers, each mentoring site will be responsible for training nonprofit arts organizations and individual artists. These trainees, in turn, will each be asked to train another organization or artist in an 'each one teach one' strategy.This effort is intended to increase the amount of local arts information on the Internet, allow local institutions to increase public recognition for their activities, and create a linked environment in which individual institutions can place their work in a national context.
An interactive electronic tour. "This project addresses the problem of bringing electronic technology into the teaching of humanities subjects in a manner that we believe will challenge traditional methods of pedagogy and benefit the learning process in a fundamental way. The technology is a newly created electronic teaching tool called *E.C.I.T* (Electronic Compendium of Images and Text), which brings together facts, conceptual materials, visual images, and three-dimensional models in a fully searchable electronic compendium."
"The vision that inspires the VAN EYCK Project is a world wide network of Art History Library Photo Archives which together would provide an unparalleled resource base for research and study. Such a network would reach a critical mass with the co-operation of as few as ten of the leading Art History Photo Libraries in the world. This would be facilitated by the existence of a relatively small number of leading centres such as the Courtauld Institute's Witt Library, the RKD and the Marburger Index with holding of images, associated scholarly material and practical information on millions of works of art. "
"Viseum is an 18 month project (from Sept 1996) to develop advanced Internet applications for museums. In particular a high speed network (ATM) will be established between Vancouver, Berlin, Paris and London. This allows fast interactivity with high resolution, accurate colour images of art. Techniques will also be developed to allow a central index to be searched for data from various sites. Authorisation methods will be implemented for access control, to allow valuable data to be available to subscribers. A CD-ROM jukebox will be implemented at the test sites to allow the servers to maintain large images online.
The exhibition galleries at the British Library's Bloomsbury site house some of the world's most famous books and documents, including the Diamond Sutra, the world's first recorded printed document, produced in China in the 8th century AD; two version of Magna Carta, internationally considered to be the foundation of civil liberties; the Lindisfarne Gospels, the pinnacle of Anglo-Saxon artistry; and Gutenberg's 42-line Bible, Europe's first printed book, c.1455.When the Library moves to St Pancras, many of its greatest works will be displayed in the purpose-built Treasures Gallery. The Treasures Digitisation programme aims to enhance access to and enjoyment of these internationally renowned masterpieces, both within and beyond the St Pancras building. Most of the items which will be displayed in the Treasures Gallery contain many artistically outstanding and historically important pages, but only one leaf at a time can be seen on exhibition. As a result of the digitisation programme we hope to be able to provide visitors with the opportunity to view on screen images of other pages and magnify details and compare items in a manner never before possible.