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The New Media Matrix is an integral part of this blog, frequently updated with the newest, most ground-breaking apps and innovations. Of the apps that have been released recently, 3 of them in the field of fine arts & museums, publishing, and photography are exceptional. These apps set the bar high in theses fields for being interactive, advanced in technology, and for being very practical.
Nintendo + the Louvre = Pure Genius
Just last week, the famous Japanese gaming company Nintendo teamed up with the Louvre in France and released an interactive audio guide and navigation system. What’s so great about this navigation system? The Nintendo 3DS allows you to steer yourself around the 652,000 square foot museum (equivalent to 11 football fields), get an in-depth explanation of paintings and artists, but also visualize the monument or sculpture in 3D that you are standing right in front of. Simply, it gives you another set of eyes to see the artwork through.
For those times you feel a million miles away from the painting, or when the crowd around the Mona Lisa inhibits you from seeing her beautiful face, you can zoom into the picture on the Nintendo 3DS for a better look.
This is a breakthrough because the Louvre, France’s national gem, has not joined the Google Art Project to mobilize the museum online for an interactive exploration. However, in cooperating with Nintendo, an incredible app has been created. A feature that sets this app apart from other museum apps and from the Google Art Project is the 3D viewing and rotating of sculptures.
It is easy to find yourself lost in the Louvre, so having a familiar navigation system that allows for advanced visualization will optimize visits to the marvelous collection.
iBooks Author
Organic chemistry exam? Check.
Final on Presidential speeches? Easy.
Midterm on abnormal psychology? Not a problem!
iBooks Author, released in January of this year has revolutionized multi-media eBooks by creating an app that allows for easy creation of your very own. These eBooks are made to be transferred to an iPad, where it can be easily used and transported.
iBooks Author surpasses any other multi-touch textbook apps because it incorporates interactive media such as videos, photo galleries, 3D pictures, and interactive diagrams. You can also create a quiz to test your knowledge on the subject. It is a dynamic app that allows for the building of a textbook in any genre, making cookbooks, scholastic textbooks, and even educational picture books possible, and easy to make.
Manipulation of the pages is stress-free, because it allows simple changes to fonts, backgrounds, photos, and column and page breaks. It is catered to meet and surpass your expectations, while helping you every step of the way.
The incorporation of widgets, interactive components of an interface, is what gives the iBooks Author the third and most unique dimension. It is this feature that makes possible the quizzes, galleries, and zoomable interactive images.
With the death of the book pending, this app brings education, literature, and digital imaging to the next level.
Have 4 lectures in one day? Instead of carrying around 4 textbooks, why not carry an iPad with 4 interactive eBooks instead?
Richard Benson’s “Printed Picture”
A picture is worth 1,000 words. Putting that to test, a picture book could tell a story 1,000 times simpler than words can.
Starting in prehistoric times when art was engraved and painted onto cave walls, art has been a means of expression, communication and legacy. Development and advancement of society can be traced through the foundation and exploration through different and new forms of art; engravings, paintings, sculptures, and pottery reveal the expansion of human expertise and progress of culture.
The website, “The Printed Picture” is built around Richard Benson’s publication with the same name, that went into depth of the history of picture printing, a breakthrough in the fine arts world that allowed for easy accessibility to pictures. This website uses authored content from Richard Benson’s printed book, and his lectures—which are both educational and informal—taken from lectures given at the exhibition.
The website contains lectures that cover subjects such as color printing, early photography in silver, and photography in ink (planographic printing).
“The Printed Picture” also contains a glossary that defines terms from the book. For people interested in the advancement of printing art without much background in the fine arts, this glossary comes in very useful.
Having such educational lectures so accessible makes the learning process of picture printing so achievable.
This app is a double whammy because you can browse Richard Benson’s work while listening to lectures describing them. But just as the printing of pictures has evolved, so will the exploration of the history of it. The potential of building upon this app to make it into a larger interactive experience is endless. Technology will advance this app even farther, pushing limits to explore new ground we currently cannot even imagine.
– Kana Maeji
Whither the Book 