Social art

One of the advantages of today's social web is that you can get a constant stream of recommendations and tips from friends and applications that can sometimes lead you to discovering new books, music, films and interests. In the early days of the net we simply surfed, often aimlessly from one link to another and now and then you stumbled upon something really interesting that you didn't know existed.

Today we get recommendations based on profiles, previous purchases, friends and preferences. Amazon were one of the first to offer this and now you can't go far without a message telling you that if you liked A you might also like B, C and D. It's all highly mathematical of course, based on increasingly complex algorithms, but the aim is that the recommendations will eventually reach the level of serendipity - when you stumble upon something you didn't know you wanted but realize is exactly right. A future web 3.0 will allegedly know so much about our preferences and interests that it can serve us with serendipitous links.

Now the art world is going social with a new social art site called Artfinder . The concept is similar to other social applications; you are lead through a selection of paintings and asked to select your favourites. Artfinder will learn your preferences and then begin to suggest other works and artists that you might also like. The more you use the service the better the recommendations.

They can't cover the entire art world since many art galleries are not so keen to share their works on the net but Artfinder has signed up a representative selection from many famous galleries. The idea is to help beginners learn about different styles and schools of art and to build on their interest. Once you dip in you can soon get immersed and the recommendations keep coming.

It's a bit like Spotify for art and you can build up your own virtual collection, share with friends, discuss and collect. For that serendipitous effect there's even a shuffle button that offers a random selection of works.

Pictures at an exhibition

Google are just about everywhere these days. First by giving us satellite views of the world via Google Earth, then by expanding that to Google Maps Street View where many of us can see the street we live on and then the latest Google Body Browser that allows us to go all the way into the human body. Now they've sent their cameras to 17 of the top art galleries of the world in the application Art Project. Here you can choose your gallery to visit and go through all the exhibition halls, stopping to admire the paintings that catch your attention. It uses the same technology as Street View and you just use your mouse to guide the camera around the gallery.

Here's the introduction film that can be found on Art Project YouTube Channel.



You can examine particular paintings in high resolution and even assemble your own virtual collection of favourites with the option of adding your own notes toeach one.

Some paintings are blurred and this is due to copyright restrictions on that particular work. Very frustrating if it happens to be the painting you are most interested in. If you hang a painting in a public gallery surely you want the work to be seen by the public? Will it really affect the galery's future income if people can also see the painting on the net? The high resolution images presented on the site are all covered by copyright anyway. I assume negotiations are in progress to eventually enable us to see even the blurred paintings.

In the meantime, enjoy your visit.