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Amit: I think what is great about REMIX is that they were one of the first events that really understood that you need to bring people from the cultural and digital sector together. You need them in the same room, thinking about these things. A lot of the museum conferences I've attended are really just museums talking to each other. REMIX is that whole idea – you need to mix it up. Otherwise it's going to remain a sector that isn't embracing the digital.Talking about your work with museums, what inspired the Google Art Project?
The project stems from when I moved from India to New York in 1999. I just found their museums amazing, you had access to these fantastic social spaces where you could go and learn. For me it was more of a social experience. It was more inspiring, to see something beautiful.
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There's the giga-pixel camera, which captures each image in incredible detail and we use purpose-built equipment that we asked our Street-View team to build. It's called a Trolley, and is a camera which allows us to walk around and capture the museums as we move.It's just a backpack that has a mounted camera, but it's running a smart piece of software which is essentially allowing the person to create, on the fly, these panoramic images. We then feed it back to our data centers and stitch them together. Then we get a curator to essentially give you a narrative about what you're seeing, so it's not just a series of pictures.I know there have been issues with some exhibitions blurring out their art.
I don't see that as an issue at all—I see that as a constructive way to manage the transition online. We have to get museums comfortable with the idea of putting up their objects. They put a lot of work into the art, they curate them, they provide stories about them, and they have the challenging job of convincing right holders and artists that putting their work freely online.
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We don't track visitor data, but according to the latest attendance figures you can see this whole notion that accessing art digitally will reduce the physical is not valid. The attendance figures are skyrocketing. If you look at the data, last year was actually the biggest in attendance.And if you're a small-to-medium museum, located in a pretty inaccessible place, then they are definitely benefiting from the Google Art Project quite a lot. But it's not just the Google Art Project – it's more about what the web in general - and how digital efforts by museums are increasing interest in cultural content.
Well there's so many. If you go to the user gallery and type "the power of zoom", you'll find a gallery that I made to show all the things I've found. Like, " No Woman NoCry" by Chris Ofili – you can zoom in on the actual tears and see the reflection of the mother and of Stephen Lawrence. There's a lot of really amazing stuff – it's just a matter of exploring it.Thanks for chatting to us.To win a pass to REMIX, email us here. For more information on REMIX check out their site.Follow Jack on Twitter: @jack_callil