
Three artists on the future of the gallery system - prismatic
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/future-of-galleries/
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softwaredoug
It is an interesting time to rethink art.

I would love a service where I could get an ultra-thin LCD, put it up, and
have a subscription to art for display on the LCD within certain parameters
perhaps with some personalization built in...

... bonus points for a matte screen that doesn't look too glossy and can give
the illusion of canvas...

~~~
Green_man
With the availability of affordable 4k screens, I think there's a real
opportunity to get a service like this for cheap. I think high resolution (and
a matte screen) are key for appreciating art. A square ratio might be ideal to
display any sort of painting, but 16x9 is by far the most available and least
expensive, especially for high resolution displays. depending on room size and
mounting location, I think a 24 or 27 inch 4k monitor could be perfect, since
you get really good pixel density. Oled could be interesting for this use
case, though they are mostly larger TV displays.

I download a lot of art as desktop wallpapers on my 4k desktop, and then use
photoshop to get the correct aspect ratio. With many art pieces, especially
with a lot of dark backgrounds and centered subjects, content aware fill can
be used to create a 16x9 ratio without cropping any of the content. For other
art, like movie posters, simply creating a [black]/[white]/[color picker]
color background for the poster to lie within allows for 16x9 landscape ratio
from an originally portrait composition.

I usually use advanced google image search to set my parameters for ~12
megapixels (4k at 3840x2160 is ~8.8 megapixels, though extra size can be
beneficial if you are going to crop, or for extra detail for content aware
fill), though it isn't perfect and often displays images that are not the
target size. it still helps cut through some of the tiny images that meet
search parameters. I've found that many of my images are just from Wikipedia,
I wonder if Wikipedia's API could be leveraged to retrieve a set of paintings
from the rococo period, "renaissance art", or whatever. Using Wikipedia images
might help avoid some legal issues, though i'm not sure if the API allows for
commercial use.

here is the original of "David with the Head of Goliath", by Caravaggio (This
version is a bit smaller than the one I originally downloaded, I'm not sure
where I first downloaded it)
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Caravagg...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Caravaggio_-
_David_with_the_Head_of_Goliath_-_Vienna.jpg)

Here is a version that I used Content Aware fill in Photoshop to widen the
image, notice that some of the patterns in the cracks of the painting are
repeated, especially on the right. The output isn't perfect, but its organic
enough to my eye, and avoids any black bars.
[https://i.imgur.com/pbr3wXZ.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/pbr3wXZ.jpg)

~~~
exmadscientist
A colleague of mine pointed out that a key part of making something like this
look good is controlling the brightness of the display to track the ambient
light level. This problem is also faced by digital photo frames... and most of
them are awful at it. The recent (?) Google frame, though, gets it _uncannily_
correct and it is _amazing_ how much this helps the illusion of being a "real
object" and not just a screen hanging on the wall.

~~~
Green_man
absolutely. I haven't done a lot of digging with this, I'd be very curious to
see the google frame in person. Eventual color E-Ink or other display
technologies may make this an easier problem, though it theoretically just
needs a mapped contrast/brightness curve and responsive sensors and backlight.

