Building a museum of museums on the web Amit Sood
[Music]
[Applause]
my name is Ahmet and 18 months ago I had
another job at Google
and I pitched this idea of doing
something with museums and art - my boss
was actually here and she allowed me to
do it and it took 18 months a lot of fun
negotiations and stories I can tell you
with 17 very interesting museums from
nine countries but I’m gonna focus on
the demo the lot of stories about why we
did this I think my personal story is
explained right simply in the slide and
it’s access and I grew up in India I had
a great education not complaining but I
didn’t have access to a lot of these
museums and these artworks and so when I
started travelling and going to these
museums I started learning a lot and
while working at Google I try to put
this desire to make it more accessible
with technology together so we formed a
team a great team of people and we
started doing this I’m gonna probably
get into the demo and then you know tell
you a couple of the interesting things
we’ve had since launch so simple you
come to Google Art Project calm you look
around all these museums here because
you feed Z you got the MoMA the homie
Taj the reich’s the mango I’m gonna
actually get to one of my favorites the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
two ways of going in very simple click
and bang you’re in this museum doesn’t
matter where you are Bombay Mexico
doesn’t really matter you move around
you have fun you want to navigate around
the museum open the plan up and in one
click jump you’re in there you want to
go to the end of the corridor
keep going have fun you know explore
[Applause]
Thanks I haven’t come to the best part
sir
so now I’m in front of one of my
favorite paintings the harvesters by
Pieter Bruegel at the met I see this
plus sign if the museum has given us the
image you click on it now this is one of
the images so this is all the metadata
information for those of you who are
truly interested in art you can click
this but I’m going to click this off
right now and this is one of these
images that we captured and what we call
gigapixel technology so this image for
example has close to I think around 10
billion pixels and I get a lot of people
asking me what do you get for 10 billion
pixels so I’m gonna try and show you
what you really get for 10 billion
pixels you can zoom around very simply
you know you see some fun stuff
happening here you know I love this guy
his expression is priceless but but then
you really want to go deep and so I
started playing around and I found
something going on over here and I was
like hold on
that sounds interesting went in and I
started noticing that these kids were
actually beating something I did a
little research spoke to a couple of my
contacts at the Met and actually found
out that this is a game called Scholl
which involves beating a goose with a
stick on Shrove Tuesday and apparently
it was quite popular I don’t know why
they did it but you know I learned
something about it now just you know
we’re really deep in you can really get
the cracks not just to give you some
perspective I’m gonna zoom out so you
really see what you get here is where we
were and this is the painting so
[Applause]
the best is yet to come
so
so now let’s just quickly jump into the
moma again in New York so another one of
my favorites the starry night now the
example I showed you was all about
finding details but what if you want to
see brushstrokes and what if you want to
see you know how Wango actually created
this masterpiece you zoom in you’re
really going I’m gonna go to one of my
favorite parts in this painting and I’m
really gonna get to the cracks this is
the starry night I think you know never
seen like this before I’m gonna show you
my other favorite feature there’s a lot
of other stuff here but I don’t have
time
this is the real cool part it’s called
collections anyone of you anybody
doesn’t matter if you’re rich if you’re
poor if you have you know a fancy you
know house doesn’t matter you can go and
create your own Museum online create
your own collection across all these
images very simply you go in and I’ve
created this called the power of zoom
you can just zoom around this is the
ambassador’s based in the National
Gallery you can annotate the stuff send
it to your friends and really get a
conversation going about what you’re
feeling when you go through these
masterpieces so I think in conclusion
for me the main thing is that all the
amazing stuff here does not really come
from Google it doesn’t in my opinion
even come from the museum’s polish and
say that it really comes from these
artists and you know that’s been my
humbling experience in this I mean I
hope in this digital medium that we do
justice to their artwork and represented
properly online and the biggest question
I get asked nowadays is did you do this
to replicate the experience of going to
a museum and the answer is no it’s to
supplement the experience and that’s it
thank you
[Applause]