Well, Google has gone and done it again: they've just unveiled their Art Project, which enables you to take virtual walkthroughs of museums from around the world, and zoom into individual works of art to get incredible levels of magnification and detail.
I decided to have a look around the Museum Kampa in Prague. I was last there in 2007, when Patty and I were teaching there for five weeks in the summer. It's in an old building right on the river, on the edge of a stretch of parkland just south of the Charles Bridge. It's just two floors, but it has a collection of good early twentieth century Czech artists, mixed with changing exhibitions of contemporary art. By clicking on photos of the rooms, you can 'walk' in, around, and between the galleries, go up to the art on the walls, look out the windows, get information about anything you see.
The technology is the same as you would see on any real estate website, of course, when you click on the 'Take Virtual Tour' link. But it's another example of the Google-isation of the world: apply existing technology in new contexts that alternately scares you with how far they've reached, and then impresses you with the new things they've done with it.
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I decided to have a look around the Museum Kampa in Prague. I was last there in 2007, when Patty and I were teaching there for five weeks in the summer. It's in an old building right on the river, on the edge of a stretch of parkland just south of the Charles Bridge. It's just two floors, but it has a collection of good early twentieth century Czech artists, mixed with changing exhibitions of contemporary art. By clicking on photos of the rooms, you can 'walk' in, around, and between the galleries, go up to the art on the walls, look out the windows, get information about anything you see.
The technology is the same as you would see on any real estate website, of course, when you click on the 'Take Virtual Tour' link. But it's another example of the Google-isation of the world: apply existing technology in new contexts that alternately scares you with how far they've reached, and then impresses you with the new things they've done with it.
Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader