
Art Project, powered by Google - Uncle_Sam
http://www.googleartproject.com/
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diiq
As a painter, I am tremendously excited to be able to take a closer look at
some of these paintings than I could in their galleries, and to have so many
works from so many collections in one place. I'm itching with anticipation to
look at each individual brush-stroke. I'm actually giggling with glee.

I love living in the future.

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Isamu
Just what I was thinking! The high-resolution view is great - the texture of
the brush strokes really show. Gives a better idea of some of the technique
involved.

Hackers, check out the behind-the-scenes video at
<http://www.googleartproject.com/c/faq> which shows the variety of tech used,
including both bike-pulled and pushcart-style cameras that draw upon the
street view technology.

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ZeroGravitas
I wonder what the copyright situation is with these photos of public domain
works. I seem to recall that Wikipedia extracted the images from a similar
system used by the National Portrait Gallery in the UK and a legal spat
ensued.

Crucially, UK copyright law gives you rights in some stuff just because you
put effort into it ("sweat of the brow") while US law has a precedent
requiring creativity, so a photo of a statue is copyrighted to the
photographer, but photograhps of flat objects don't.

~~~
_delirium
Here's Wikipedia's summary of that dispute:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_W...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute)

It looks like the NPG asserts that use of the images is illegal, but isn't
willing to sue the Wikimedia Foundation over it, so they're at something of a
stalemate with Wikimedia de-facto winning (but with no guarantees for other
parties who aren't Wikimedia). Wikimedia's official position seems to be more
or less an ultimatum of, "these are public domain, sue us if you think we're
wrong":
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD-
Art_tag)

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dmvaldman
If you look at the "behind the scenes" video, you'll see they are also trying
to photograph sculptures by panning around them in 3D. You can't see any of
them on the site though.

Do you think they will be able to make navigatable models of sculptures too?
This would be exciting.

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roc
Naturally, the first thing I did was search for The Art Institute of Chicago.

Defeated, I found "Evening, Honfleur" in the Museum of Modern Art. It wasn't
_quite_ the same, but my inner dork was satisfied. ;)

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bhavin
Oh, I thought interface was pretty difficult to navigate until I learned that
I could use typical 'game controls' like arrow keys or a,s,w,d to navigate!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Just like in Streetview, indeed this is streetview with added detail images
but for art galleries.

Quite awesome.

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jmarbach
This is a tremendous help for art history students who can not easily access
some of the most praised works of art in the world. Seeing a work of art in a
museum creates a transformational experience that can not be replicated on the
page of a text-book.

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wheaties
Thank you for posting this. I was busy this weekend sketching out the
beginnings of something similar and cataloging which museums where nearby
which I could entice with "my" idea. Time to change direction.

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allanp8
I don't understand..(?) There is only one piece of art on this website: A
black text on white background that says "Error: Server Error"

Is that the "Art of the App Engine"?

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sp332
It's a contemporary, deconstructionist, accessible, self-referential, stark,
self-explanatory work, addressing the fleeting nature of digital ephemera
across huge, seemingly permanent structures like the Internet and Google.

I like it. :-)

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m0tive
I like how you can now go into the gallery using streetview
<http://goo.gl/maps/KAVo>

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thisisananth
I love it. People who never had a chance to visit those museums can now see
them

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dholowiski
Flash only? After google's stance on h.264, this is quite surprising.

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icefox
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