Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

I’ll be up front and clear.  This post is an overview of Cloud Computing and why museums should care or at least be aware of it.  First though, I find the progression of the server room quite interesting.

In the beginning one would have a singular huge computer that would crave the computational power of your cell phone.  Access to these main frames was given to the end users through terminals or consoles.  As servers became smaller and relatively cheap (< $10k), we began to fill our server rooms with many racks of computers.  Each server typically had a dedicated purpose.  Much is wasted with this model, since many of these servers would sit idly by +90% of the time while still consuming an immense amount of power.  Not too long ago the Virtual Machine gave us the ability to run many virtual servers on a single machine.  This was just a step away from where we are today.  Why not run these virtual machines on someone else’s server?

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An amazing product has emerged from Microsoft’s Live Labs.  Photosynth allows anyone to create an immersible and interactive experience given just a set of digital photographs of an area.  I’ll just warn up front that this is a Windows only product at this point, but its novelty more than justifies the download and installation.

Photosynth screen capture showing the Asian Gallery at the IMA

As you read on, you’ll probably discover that I had way too much fun with this tool, and I hope you will as well.

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Student using Global Origins

If you find yourself wandering through the Asian Art Galleries here at the IMA, take a quiet moment to follow the sounds of the Qin music. You will be led to a giant LCD display with a touch panel overlay and a hair dryer-esque sound dome above your head. Global Origins represents one of the first applications developed in-house by the IMA and marks a pivotal point in how the museum approaches technology.

I’ll step back a moment now and introduce myself. My name is Charlie Moad and I am an Applications Developer (a.k.a software developer) here at the museum. Now before you conjure up thoughts of suspenders and lisps, let me assure you I am quite the contrary. I have never played Dungeons and Dragons and I was only addicted to World of Warcraft for 6 months! I started at the museum 2 years ago and we have since hired another software developer and a graphics designer. Together we form what we call, the Applications Team. Traditionally museums outsource their technology which can be very expensive and time consuming. Each project requires bringing a new consultant up to speed on the basic operations of the institution. We allow the museum to retain knowledge and be more flexible when approaching technology.

Now back to Global Origins (GO). GO is an add-on to the NASA developed 3D world viewer, World Wind. Visitors are presented with a spinning globe and a series of stamps with works of art on them. Touching a stamp spins and zooms the globe to the respective origin and provides more information on the work and the culture. The application is meant to provide users with a visual orientation of where some of these works originated.

Global Origins using World Wind by NASA

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