Technology-Enhanced Art Viewing

Two iPhone-based applications (apps) are set to make things easier for folks who want a bit of guidance in how to spend their limited art-viewing hours. First is a free app called Artnear (there's also a Pro version that costs $4.99, which gives you additional functionality, but [perhaps because it's summer] I haven't quite felt the need for it yet). Its genius is how it's designed to be consulted when you're already out and about gallery or museum hopping. With 5 views (Near, Venues, Artists, Calendar and Bookmarks), Artnear duplicates a fair bit of what you get on other listing sites...and so long as your phone gives you Internet access, you could navigate to one of them while walking about... but they can't provide the "Near" part of the service:

Near

The integrated GPS localizes you and gives you nearby venues. You can view the Venue details by selecting them, or see a map which shows where you are in relation to the Venues.

So say you're in a section of a town and you know there are other galleries nearby, but the local map you've picked doesn't look anything like the streets you're on (I love you guys, but I found it so hard to orient myself recently when consulting one of the L.E.S. maps)...with the Near function, you can find your way based on where you're standing when you look.

The other app is one I haven't yet tried, but according to artinfo.com, it stands to make museum viewing a much more interactive and personalizable experience. Marisa Rindone explains:

The Brooklyn Museum has found a new, 21st-century way for visitors to navigate its galleries: Pick out an artwork on your iPhone and let the Web do the curating for you.

This week, the New York museum launched its self-guided smart-phone tours, akin to audio tours of old but with one major difference: Nothing is preordained. Neither the museum nor the mobile device knows where it’s going to take you.

Instead, the tours are personalized as you go along (think iTunes’s Genius feature), and they work on any Internet-enabled phone. This isn’t simply an iPhone app, or a program that works only on a device on loan from the museum. It’s essentially a new way to make sense of the building’s sprawling galleries, and to ensure that a visitor doesn’t miss an artwork in tune with his or her tastes.

Having fallen madly in love with the Pandora app (which selects and plays new music based on a singer or song you select via the Music Genome project), I'm quite sure the Brooklyn Museum app will be utterly addictive. And it sounds fun to use:

Shelley Bernstein, the museum’s chief of technology and developer of the smart-phone tours, explains how to get started: “There’s signage in each room that says where to point your browser, which floor, and which room you’re in.” The system will recognize them instantly. “Then, based on what’s in here, it will show you what past users have recommended.”

A number of pictures will pop up on the screen. If you like something, tap its image, then hit “Recommend,” a button prominently placed at the top of the screen. From there, your phone will call up miniatures of other pieces in the room that users who share your tastes have chosen.

The idea is for the phone to create a piece-by-piece map, which prompts a user to go from one piece to the next. Having a separate code for each room means visitors can tackle one gallery at a time. “My hope is that it’s like a scavenger hunt,” says Bernstein of the tour. “You actually go find the thing. I want it to become an aid, literally a guide to go find stuff, not a multimedia tour that’s just television-watching.”

Anyone tried it yet?