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

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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

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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]