we’re experiencing a vast blooming of culture throughout the world… every day… article by article and piece by piece… we bring ourselves closer to… something…
…Google’s newly launched Arts & Culture application which puts works of art from over a thousand museums across 70 countries into the palm of your hand. But the app goes beyond offering only static images and text – instead, it now offers tools to search art works by any keyword, browse by color, as well as see an artists’ works evolve over time. It even supports 360-degree virtual tours, which you can view in Google Cardboard, and an “Shazam for art”-like feature that will identify the painting in your camera’s viewfinder.
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While these features help the app’s user discover and understand art…Source: https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/20/googles-new-arts-culture-app-brings-the-worlds-art-virtual-tours-and-more-to-your-smartphone/
Well, I don’t have very much to say but I do have some passing comments about Google’s app.
First, let me say that Google’s new app helps users with some art. ‘Fine art‘.
It’s important to note that. Why? Because most art in the world is not ‘fine art’ and most people don’t interact with ‘fine art’ as much as you’d think. ‘Fine art’ is a pretty limited category.
Why Only Fine Art?
Well, my bet is that Google wanted to start with the most popular, copyright free, art pieces that would be easy to get access to (since the pieces are at museums). It’s simply a great place to start… it reminds me of the beginnings of Google’s book digitization program.
However, it could also be due to the fundamental misunderstanding pushed on society by the ‘fine art‘ peoples that ‘fine art‘ is the only real art… that it is the complete embodiment of all artistic ventures and everything else is just trash aspiring to be ‘fine’.
And you know…
For every painting in a museum, there’s a million other pieces of fantastic art ~ out there ~ floating around in the world.
Which is the perfect opportunity for Google to expand its app to include ever more art… Who knows, someday it may become a kind of modified search engine allowing art pieces from everybody everywhere to be easily found by everyone.
The potential here is simply massive.
Society’s engagement with art is increasing wildly. As a people, we have never written so many books, made so many movies, painted so many pieces…
Google’s app is not only a step towards something great, it’s a tangible current example of what our future may hold.
And that’s commendable.
Passing Notes
While you may think this is fancy dancy of me…
It’d be nice if we knew who all helped make this and their personal reasons for doing so. These people are part of Google, not nameless entities inside of Google… We should recognize and reward people’s achievements.
And I can only imagine that someday, in the textbooks of the distant future, there will be a chapter titled ‘The Great Art Expansion of the 21st Century‘… or perhaps… ‘The Grand Enlightenment‘…