Google Art Project - Amazing Digital Virtual Museum Tours

Well this is pretty amazing, the ability to view some of the worlds most elaborate and precious art pieces from multiple angles and distance with true brilliant digital resolution. I am in awe and have a renewed appreciation for the masters. By seeing the details in the actual brushstrokes, techniques utilized to represent 3D perspective, and color/texture applications, one can only marvel at the complexity and scale of some of these works.
It is also nice to see that these works can be preserved now, to continue to inspire and mesmerize future generations. I still want to see these works at the musems, but until I can get there, this is a pleasant substitute. I hope you enjoy

You can now explore some of the world’s most precious works of art to a depth that even their creators may not have known. Search engine giant Google has unveiled their unparalleled Art Project, an interface much like Street View that allows you to explore 17 of humanity’s best art museums. There are more than 1000 priceless works of art by 400+ artists in collections at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in NYC, The Tate Britain in London, and many other famous galleries. Each of these extensive gatherings of art is now easily explorable through your computer at no cost. Not only that, but you can explore many of these artworks by zooming in to see individual brush strokes. That’s something only visitors to these museums typically enjoy, and it gets better. At least one painting at each museum has been scanned to absurdly high resolution: 7 to 14 billion pixels. Most people can spend their entire lives visiting museums and never see a painting at such levels of detail. Add in the accompanying search features, video discussions, and detailed accounts of each piece and you can see how the virtual experience may be an improvement upon the physical one. Watch the introduction to the project in the video below, followed by a brief behind the scenes look at its creation. Free, detailed, easily accessible – Google’s Art Project is a beautiful example of the democratizing and enlightening power of technology.

I usually don’t show videos at the maximum size, but I want you to see the wonderful clarity of the paintings included in Google Art Project. Some of these images are simply stunning.

singularityhub.com...




Google Art Project

Peace,
spec

Mods, not sure if this is correct forum, so please move if necessary.

Truly a stupendous project that is gonna keep me fascinated for hours. Even after reading your description, I wasn't expecting the level of detail to be so great--but it is. S&F and thanks for sharing!

reply to post by The GUT


Hey TheGut, glad you are enjoying! I too was/am amazed, and this is truly a unique experience and a first view for me. It really illustrates what the artist did to create their effects and viewing distance skills.
Thanks for the reply,
spec

Awesome site. Thanks for posting it. I have been snowed in for 5 days so this is a nice site to kill time tyvm

reply to post by pez1975


My pleasure pez, I am still going through what that site offers and am in awe of the detail!
Thank you for commenting,
spec

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


ooooooooo! ahhhhhhhh! Lovely! Thank you for posting this.

Just to add...if you are looking up an artist or subject matter (theme), or if you know the title of the painting you want to find, but do not know the museum in which it is located, you will find this website a good start: www.wga.hu...

Once you find the painting and get the particular details on it that you need, this website will also tell you where it is located so that you can look it up on the interactive site you just listed.

reply to post by Alethea

Very nice link Alethea, much thanks! Now I can add a little intention in my exploration of the google art site.
This has really been a cool experience going over these works, and the fact that people can now appreciate these paintings from all over the globe with the click of a button. Wonder if Leonardo could have predicted that?

Peace,
spec

Wow, great images/resolution. Why is it always google doing this stuff?

reply to post by LordBaskettIV

Why is it always google doing this stuff?

Power, power and more power I guess. They certainly have the most widespread platform to work with, and their purchasing power probably knows no end. I wonder just how many future innovations they will put their name on too? Either way, I think this art site is a decent contribution to humanity, especially if it stays free, the site that is.

Peace,
spec

It would be neat if they open sourced it or made it usable to the common artist though. I would love my own little virtual gallery that supported such high resolutions(obviously this more geared tword us traditional artists).