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Boosting cultural content in cyberspace

SIEM REAP — Museums, governments and institutions should take advantage of the dizzying array of opportunities the digital sphere presents to expose the online audience to more cultural content, said Director of the Google Cultural Institute, Mr Amit Sood.

Creation Myths by Mr Rodel Tapaya. The National Heritage Board, a Google Cultural Institute partner, has a collection of 150 artworks hosted on the Google site. PHOTO: NHB

Creation Myths by Mr Rodel Tapaya. The National Heritage Board, a Google Cultural Institute partner, has a collection of 150 artworks hosted on the Google site. PHOTO: NHB

SIEM REAP — Museums, governments and institutions should take advantage of the dizzying array of opportunities the digital sphere presents to expose the online audience to more cultural content, said Director of the Google Cultural Institute, Mr Amit Sood.

“The Web, right now, needs more cultural content because cultural content consumption is not part of our daily habits,” he said, adding that while museums are often thought of as a physical space, this now needs a “rethink” as audiences change.

“Domestic audiences are on their mobile phones all the time, international audiences are searching for information (online),” noted Mr Sood.

With more cultural content online, the local arts scene could be given a boost, such as when a user researching a trip to Singapore comes across a painting by a top artist here.

The Google Cultural Institute is a non-commercial initiative set up in 2011 to increase accessibility to artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites digitally.

It has 455 partners globally, including Singapore’s National Heritage Board (NHB), which has a collection of 150 artworks hosted on the Google site.

“The partnership allows the NHB to make Singapore’s National Collection more accessible to varied audiences,” an NHB spokesperson told TODAY. “By allowing audiences to browse the collection at their leisure, we hope to further pique their interest to view the artworks for themselves at our museums. The NHB will continue to enhance the quality of our content, while exploring further possibilities in the collaboration.”

Meanwhile, through the Google Cultural Institute platform, users can take a virtual tour of landmarks such as the Palace of Versailles and the White House, explore sites such as Stonehenge and the Great Barrier Reef or study paintings such as Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

Recently, more than 90,000 images from Cambodia’s iconic Angkor region were added to the institute’s World Wonders Project, allowing users to come up close to famous artistic carvings such as the Churning Of The Sea Of Milk and the Battle Of Kurukshetra.

Digital exhibitions created by official curators were recently added, but users can also create their own collections on the platform to share their favourite images. There are now more than 350,000 galleries, with 30,000 shared publicly.

“What’s really encouraging, which no one could actually predict, is what’s coming out,” said Mr Sood. “What people are connecting with might be very different from what the museum wants them to connect with.”

The Google Cultural Institute also holds monthly talks so users can learn about and debate on a topic.

Technology-wise, Mr Sood said Google wants to make scalable the gigapixel technology used to photograph paintings. A gigapixel image is composed of one billion pixels, so while it allows users to zoom in at brushstroke level to examine the very high-resolution image in minute detail, it could also be difficult to display on websites.

The solution would be the creation of better software to process and display such images.

“How are you going to show the gigapixel (image) on the website, how are you going to process the gigapixel (image) ... These are all very interesting ideas,” said Mr Sood.

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