Thursday, September 4, 2014

Gurney Casein Exhibit


(You can slide through the images on your trackpad or use arrow keys to navigate the embedded feature above. Click on an image and zoom in, or play the video. If it doesn't work in the embedded form, just link directly over to my exhibition website.) 

A while ago I received an invitation from Google to help them test a new toolset for artists and museums called "Google Open Gallery."

The online tools let you share your paintings in a scalable format, so visitors can zoom into the finest details. You can also combine your images into exhibits and enhance them with video and audio. I like the way a sound recording or a short video shot on location can bring a painting to life and make you feel like you're there.

I put together an exhibition of 20 of my plein-air casein studies, accompanied by 14 videos and 4 audio captures. To get the full experience, please follow this link to the James Gurney Casein Exhibit on Google Open Gallery.

Google is currently giving out the tools to artists for free, but it's by invitation only. If you would like to request an invite, or just explore other exhibitions, check out the main page at Google Open Gallery. Both my exhibit presentation and Google's design interface is a work in progress. Let us know how it's working on your player—or what questions you might have—in the comments.

I made a watercolor exhibit, too, and I'll show you that in a couple of days.

12 comments:

  1. I use Google Chrome. While I wasn't able to view everything properly from the plugin on your page, the link worked wonderfully!

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  2. You do amazing paintings! I realy enjoy them and have learned a lot with your demos. Thanks for sharing!!

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  3. As always, James, thank you for your generosity in putting this together. The zoomable/high-resolution images of these by-now-familiar paintings are fascinating!

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  4. Oh my! I do hope the "Casein in the Wild" video mentioned in the details of one of the paintings is a real thing. Really looking forward to it now!

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  5. Love the zoom and high res! It worked fine for me via the link, on Google Chrome.

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  6. update on macbook - the embedded version on your blogger is still a bit wonky, making it difficult to hide the smaller version of the image showing where you're zooomed to. Also missing on google chrome is the next arrow i would expect to find on the right side of the screen.
    Clicking the link to the full exibition website tho is great and love the interface over there!

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  7. I second Danielle. With google chrome there was a problem with the embedded version, but the full version worked brilliantly. I'd there's also a wee bit of of a problem with just how you zoom out without exiting the image, but that's a very minor quibble. It all looks like a very straightforward and intuitive layout, the attached videos and audio clips are a great touch, and it's very informative to zoom right in on your colours and brushstrokes!

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  8. Enjoyed it (and the watercolor one). I second Ernest--would love to see a "Casein in the Wild" available on DVD!

    I went straight to the page through the link rather than trying the embedded one. Noticed a few user interface issues: Some of the text shows up in multiple places, and it can be confusing out of context. For example, there are places where you see the text "click details . . ." but it's unclear how to get to the "details" link. (This happened after I had zoomed in and then pressed the "play" button to start the slide show, and then paused the slide show. I had to figure out that "X" takes you back to the non-slideshow version, where you can then get to "details.") It's also kind of odd that after you zoom in, you can no longer get to the videos and sound clips without using "X" to zoom back out. I'd rather browse zoomed in with "details" on and still be able to play the clips.

    Enjoyed the paintings immensely. I've seen most of them on your blog, but it was excellent to get them in high resolution and the ability to zoom in.

    It will be great if this Google offering encourages more artists to make their work available online in high-quality formats.

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  9. Worked fine for me on Chrome. I do love the layout, and the predictive search function. Wonderful!

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  10. Using Safari on a Mac, on your website, couldn't navigate past the first image as no button displayed. Went to the link and it worked better navigation wise, but the glass blower video hung up and stopped playing very quickly, had to click the x to close to continue… did listen to one of the voice recordings and it played fine. Didn't bother with any other 'extras'… loved seeing your artwork up close though.

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  11. Hi James. What a great set of paintings, and what an interesting way to display them. Can you tell a bit more about your experience with the tool? Do you see it as viable way to set up an entire website? I've always had a thing for hosting my website by myself but in this case it seems you have to host your images on Google.

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  12. Carlos, basically, you upload the high rez files, choose the presentation mode and enhancements, and then configure it how you want. They give you an embed feature so that you can put it into your own website.

    Thanks for the reports on how it plays on your devices. The engineers are still working out the bugs.

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