Sample result image from First Impressions

I am excited to announce the IMA’s launch of First Impressions, a new tagging feature on our website. This new feature gives you an opportunity to tell us what grabs your attention when viewing items in our collection, without typing ‘text-based’ tags.

As we have developed this project, I have realized this is a really fun way to interact with the objects in our collection. As each work is displayed, you are asked to click on what first draws your eye. After clicking through the whole set (this time it is about 12 images), you will see each image with an overlay, showing where you clicked and where everyone else clicked. Your click will be displayed as a small black marker on each image. Everyone else’s clicks will display in a heat map- an array of colors showing the most clicked (and most noticed) areas of each work. The darker the shade of red, the more clicks have occurred in that area.

We are planning to make this an ongoing series with new sets of works to view in the future. Each time we release a new set, we will post about it. We also hope to post results from previous First Impressions sets showing you what people see- and also what they don’t see.

With much of the US already experiencing winter weather, we were inspired to gather up chilly images inspired by Winter Solstice. This set reflects the change in the seasons and the weather to come over the next few months. So grab your favorite warm beverage (I prefer hot chocolate this time of year), come in out of the cold, and give us your First Impressions.

Click here to get started

Seeing the progress of the park from these photos makes it appear that these images were taken a couple weeks before the park officially opened.

Since we are using Google Maps to create a mobile experience in the park, our application received an automatic update as well. If you browse to the IMA website on your mobile phone or use this link to go directly to the map: 100 Acres Map; You will see the updated imagery along with further information about each work and the nature around it.

Tags on Artworks

When viewing an artwork on the website you will notice a section called TELL US WHAT YOU SEE in the right sidebar.  This is the area where you can interact with the page by providing your own tags.  It also displays the top tags provided by users for this work.  When you enter your own tags they will be highlighted in a color matching the IMA logo on the page.

The larger the tag the more times it has been used to describe this work.  You can even hover your mouse over each tag to get a tool-tip that shows how many times that tag has been used. Clicking on a tag will take you to the Collection Search and perform a search for other works with that tag.

Tags in the Collection Search

One of the goals of using tagging on the IMA website is to make artworks easier to discover. To achieve this we also integrated the tags into the collection search. When you perform a search you will be provided with a list of the top tags associated with all of the works in the left sidebar. You can click on these tags to filter your search results to only see works with the tags clicked. As you can see in the image on the right, I have filtered my search to only show works that have the tags sky and water associated with them.

Tag Tours

Tag Tours provide a guided tour through some interesting works that you otherwise might not discover on our site. These tours were built by our staff to provide a fun and alternative experience for browsing our collection.

Tag Tours

Latest Tags

On the Interact page you are able to see the latest tag activity in the right sidebar. Here you can see the most recent tags added to works in our collection. You can click on any of these tags to view the page for the work that the tag was applied to.

Interact

How it’s Made

All of the tagging functionality was built using the Steve Tagger software. The Steve Tagger software is being developed to provide tagging for museums and to make it easy. For full disclosure… I am one of the primary developers on the Steve Tagging project and the IMA is one of the grant partners.

(via curiousexpeditions)

Of course the search function we would be most interested in is for the artworks.  With this application museum visitors could use their phone to quickly look up extended information on a work of art without having to type the sometimes long title/artist combination into the phone.  From what I can tell this is returning content from Google’s index and therefore could show information about the work provided by the museum itself.

One area that could see a significant benefit from this is outdoors where signage is typically limited.  As we add more outdoor works of art in 100 Acres, it would be great for a visitor to take a quick photo of a work and find out detailed information on that piece.

This technology is still fairly new and Google admits they have more work to do.  However this is a great step in making information more easily accessible while on the go.  I have added few videos below and here is a link to the Google Goggles site.

So now who has an Android phone so we can test this out??

Here is a video from Google explaining the functionality of the application.

Here is another video showing a demo of the application.  They show how it recognizes an artwork and a book.

So to better describe what my words can’t, here is a screen shot of the Metro Paris iPhone app.  This application provides users with the locations of the nearest subway stations in their area along with nearby businesses.

Métro Paris application

Here is a video of the application in action (its in French but shows all of the apps functionality).

For museums this technology could provide a new experience for a visitor.  Not only could they see the wonderful works of art but it would allow them to view more information about each work just by pointing their cell phone camera.  Maybe an ArtBabble video is displayed or some expanded information about the creator.  Or what if it pointed the visitor in the direction of every work by a particular artist they were interested in?

A lot of people probably are thinking, ‘I’m not going to hold up my phone and walk around like that.’ but it has to be safer than texting while walking.  Just watch out for open manholes in the street.

This technology is still very new and as our mobile devices continue to get more powerful these applications should become more powerful as well.  So keep an eye out for these applications as more are getting developed every day and developers are just starting to get acquainted with the new technology.

Moving Time

Yes that’s right, I moved here from the center of America, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  I actually am a native Hoosier but moved further out west a few years ago.  South Dakota is an interesting place, it is very flat and has a lot of wind.  There are a lot of windmill farms popping up all over the state.  We enjoyed living in South Dakota but the opportunity at the museum was a good excuse to move back.

My family freezing in South Dakota. I will not miss the long cold winters.

Enough about me, now to something interesting I found over the summer.

While browsing the web I found and became an avid watcher of a design contest called Layer Tennis.  This contest pitted designers against each other in a challenge to build off of each others work.  Here is the description from the website:

We’ll be playing matches using video, animation, sound, photos, type and lots more, but the basic idea is the same no matter what tools are in use. Two competitors will swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley” and then we post it to the site live. A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action, as it happens.

There were a lot of interesting designs that came out of this contest.  I thought it was really exciting to see how each designer was able to take a quick 15 minutes and really add their own style to the work.

One of my favorite series of images came from this ‘volley‘ where Chris Glass and Aaron Draplin ended in a draw.  This fall they will be having another challenge so keep an eye on the the site if you liked what you saw from this series.