Be Jackson Pollock
this is the coolest:
http://www.jacksonpollock.org/
this is the coolest:
http://www.jacksonpollock.org/
I've been thinking about the idea of making an art/map mashup for a while. This was one of the original ideas for globalcollage.com - to mashup art from around the world - giving a global perspective through the eyes of artists..and showing it all on a map. With google maps and like services, it should be fairly easy to make this happen. When I get some time, I'll try to put it together...
Pretty interesting: Saatchi is hosting head to head artist showdowns:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/
Design of this site is so terrible that it's difficult to find - and hard to understand what happens when a showdown is won, but concept is interesting
I just updated the onlineArt listing with info about BoundlessGallery. They've really made some improvements over the last several months. There's a whole host of innovative features (including the widget below). The funny thing is that it doesn't come together. They're taking an approach similar to John Edwards - throwing all of the tech at the problem, but not doing it in a coherent way. The effect is haphazard and difficult to navigate. It's a good starting point, but they'll need to refine. Or hire a new designer.
Hm. I don't like the way that widget is working. Doesn't refresh enough and the articles aren't relevant enough. I'm thinking that there needs to be some kind of RSS reader archiving service. I've done a little searching and haven't seen anything of the sort. Google reader has a feature that lets you create a web page from your starred items, which is getting there - but i'd also like to be able to add notes and organize by tag/category - so that I could then pull a feed from a particular tag or tag combination into a news widget. Or add the categories independently to my blog/website.
It's almost like delicious for RSS feeds. I suppose you could use delicious to do this, but the process would be laborious.
Something like this would be really useful for people doing research and wanting to share it on a blog - i'm writing a book right now and doing something of the sort in an ad-hoc sort of way (mobilevoter.org/blog.html). Also have a client for whom the widget-side of this idea would be valuable. Well, i'll keep searching for a tool and if I can't find one, will probably build one.
I just made an online art news widget! It took me several hours and is not working great yet. You can see it in the right nav. I was surprise how difficult it was actually - I set it up at Widgetbox and it required getting into some JavaScript - I would have thought there would be a more turnkey approach to creating a widget out of an RSS feed. Maybe there is, but I couldn't find anything that was quite right.
Also tried using Yahoo Pipes, but didn't have much luck getting reliable output. It seemed to vacillate between good results and crap results.
What I'd really like to do is create a widget where you can easily check off news clips that should be archived and select a category, and the news will be saved for permaternity there. As it stands, the news will just cycle through this widget, so it doesn't provide anything other than immediate value.
Well, will keep working on it....
I've been thinking a bunch about best ways for organizing art on a website. Conceptually, of course, the best method is to show you stuff you like. Everyone tries to do this from Amazon to Art.com. Amazon does a pretty good job, Art.com sucky.
The worst model: categorization by style or medium. Come on now, who would want to browse a category of mostly sucky "Landscape" paintings. This schema gives you virtually no love.
The best model: I don't know. I've got a bunch of ideas, such as:
* Guides - someone takes you through an art collection. They're your personal curator. You identify with the guide first, and then go with them on a tour. Guides could also be rated.
* Curation - this is kind of like a guide but focused more on a physical space. The curator builds a space. Guides could then give tours of their favorite spaces.
These are my two leading ideas. I think they'd work well. Certainly improving on what's there now.
I'm also interested in ratings systems. The most viewed approach seems so game-able. Crackle/Grouper has a really interesting approach. On the one hand they have editor's picks. Ok, fine, but not scalable and not useful to people who don't align with those editors. On the other hand, they have a leaderboard that uses some interesting metrics:
* thumbs up positive ratings by visitors: 5 points
* each comment on a work: 5 points
* someone adds a video to their playlist: 3 points
* video is sent to a friend: 1 point
* one-click publish video: 20 points
So basically, if you put it on a social networking site, you get mad points. Is this system game-able? Sure. Is it less game-able than most votes By a long shot. Is it useful to viewers? I don't know. It's probably the most useful way to organize a most popular list.
I suppose the question then is: is a most popular list useful, assuming it's not gamed. People like what other people like. We're followers. I think that's been proven by studies - and by behavioral analysis of web sites. So assuming that people who are publishing to their social networking sites share some tastes with you, then yes, this system works.
But that assumption really means that we're back to square one with first needing to find a group of people or a person who share your tastes. If all of the raters are Thomas Kinkade fanatics, the whole system falls apart (for me).
Facebook has got the corner on this market. The apps that show you stuff according to what your friends like are really working well (books, movies, music). Nothing for art yet like this, but I think that's because it's not mainstreamed enough yet. It hasn't been made relevant enough to young audiences that they'd incorporate it onto their profile pages like they would music and movies. Even books are more mainstreamed than art. There's a big opportunity here.
I'm so inspired by Digg Lab's news visualizations. Visually, I love the "Stack." Functionally, the "BigSpy" works better.
What if there was something similar for art? Like if you could see art coming in from all over the world. Could also be mashed-up onto a Google Map - so you get a big picture view of the kind of art that's being created in different locals. And then can zoom down to street level and see the pieces in the context of where they were created. Or the artist could set a location that's relevant to the piece itself. A merging of art and physical location.
I wonder if you'd start to see any trends? Like - are German artists creating a certain style of art in general - how is it different than art from Zimbabwe? Maybe this type of visualization would change how art movements are perceived. Like when did the impressionist movement become a movement? At what point did it move from being a couple guys painting in a similar style to a movement. Would a visualization and mapping of art today lead to the identification of art movements?
Why can't I find any art widgets? Crazy that none of these art sites would offer them. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. I found one for ITunes album art, but that was about it. There's a Facebook art app for displaying art in your profile - i think it's run by AllPosters.com - but they don't seem to have a widget themselves.
