My friends and I have been trying to coordinate a trip back to Japan for years. We’ve finally gotten our flights booked and now we’re working out the details in anticipation, reminiscing about our previous adventures and seeking out new places to explore near Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. We’re also brushing up on the language skills that we’ve let get a little rusty over the years. I thought I would share some of the modern tools that I’m using to restore my proficiency, in the hopes that this might give our readers some ideas for similar tools to look into for studying their own foreign languages of interest.

When I first visited Japan, I bought an electronic dictionary. This saved me from looking up kanji (the complex characters borrowed from Chinese) by counting strokes and identifying radicals (the root component of a kanji character) to index into the enormous tome that I had been using. The dictionary was much lighter, and had a stylus that could be used to draw kanji. Using this sort of input method, the order that you draw the strokes still matters, but it’s much faster than flipping pages. I used this dictionary for getting around Japan, studying, reading manga, and playing video games. Years later, after the Nintendo DS came out, I upgraded using a cartridge called Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten. It uses the same stylus input method, but the results are marked up in color and it has a nicer interface, including a history of recently looked-up words, which is extremely useful. One of the other tools that I was using at the time (and still use today) is a plugin for Firefox called Rikai-chan. When enabled, this plugin allows you to hover the mouse over a word and see the definition in a pop-up.

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Filed under: Technology, Travel

Web designers know that the industry involves plenty of change, and continuous adaption and development of skills is required in order to stay up to date. In the past few years, one of the biggest areas of change has been the amount of web-savvy users who are accessing their favorite sites via phones and mobile devices. (via smashingmagazine)

To coincide with the opening of 100 Acres, we are releasing a greatly enhanced mobile version of our site, with more content accessible from mobile phones. Anyone with a modern phone using Webkit (iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, etc.) can explore the IMA online by visiting http://www.imamuseum.org right from their device.

The cool thing is, our website automatically detects if you are on a mobile phone,  and you will be sent to the mobile version of the site. You’ll have quick access to upcoming events and general visitor information (hours, directions). You can also check out our twitter, facebook, flickr, and videos.

We’re excited to also release a rich experience in the 100 Acres section of the mobile site. In order to provide trail maps we turned to OpenStreetMap, which we like to describe as the “Wikipedia of maps”. Anyone can contribute and edit map data. You can draw new features directly on maps or upload GPS trails from a device. On our site you can toggle between trail maps provided by OpenStreetMaps or satellite imagery provided by Google. The map is also aware of your geolocation, and will place a blue dot exactly where you are in the park.

OpenStreetMap: The "Wikipedia of maps".

We are going to provide a rich mix of art and nature tour stops to give visitors access to videos, photos and text for specific locations in the park. We plan on updating nature stops to highlight when certain plants are in bloom and to show you where we see some of our furry friends.

100 Acres mobile landing page.

Toggle between satellite and trail maps.

Interactive tour stops for works of art and nature.

In the series of screen shots below you can see how to bookmark the IMA mobile web site on an iPhone to make it look and feel like a native application.

Press the "+" to add the site to your home screen.

Select "Add to Home Screen"

The site now acts like an app.

Mobile view of http://www.imamuseum.org

Don’t forget to take some time to look up from your phones when in 100 Acres!

Filed under: Art and Nature Park, Technology

At the IMA, social media has become rather important. We use it to build relationships with you, our online audience, yes- but we also hope to encourage you to build relationships with each other and your community. I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to tell the difference between my “personal” and “professional” social media interactions because the lines have blurred in so many ways just in the past couple of years. Yes, part of it has to do with passion for what I do, but even so- everything has become so intertwined, so to speak, when it comes to the ‘interwebs’.

This photo was snapped just this morning down in 100 Acres by Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Lisa Freiman and promptly tweeted by CEO Max Anderson:

Steel workers gather for a photo opp. on top of Free Basket by Los Carpinteros

Take for instance how social media has reshaped the world of journalism. “Citizen journalism” is the concept of members of the public “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.” Examples of this can be seen through blogs, twitter, and camera phone images.

As a museum, we can employ this same idea. Staff, artists and visitors can capture events as they happen with their iPhone or a Flip Video. The following images were captured on artist duo Type A’s cell phones and then uploaded to Facebook:

The top ring of "Team Building (Align)" casts a shadow

Astronomer Brian Murphy of Butler U. and Andrew of Type A work out some calculations to place the second ring for "Team Building (Align)"

So, budding art journalists, here are some tips from caffienatedtraveller.com to get you started:

• Acknowledge the artwork and museum in the photo credits. It is time for bloggers to step up and put on a professional face.
• Post great images and not the family snap shots on your blog. Why discredit a good art exhibit.
• Flash photography? Don’t go there unless you have explicit permission from the museum. Not even when you think you’re alone.
• Leave the fanatical blogger psyche at the entry door. Spend some zen time in the moment, with the art and the space and then shoot.

In the meantime, I’ll be looking for your tweets, status updates and image uploads. And let’s continue to blur the lines together, shall we?

Filed under: Art, Art and Nature Park, Current Events, New Media, Technology

I’m going to attempt to do this as a reoccurring theme and see how it goes. Basically “Geeking Out on Art” will be a review/news of the latest innovative technology applications to the art world that I stumble across. If you have something you you think I should check out and write about, shoot me a tweet!!

This week I wanted to talk about the iPhone app “Is This Art?“.

Made with love in the STEEL City, this app is collaborative endeavor produced by the Pittsburgh-based artists and developers at Deeplocal and the Mattress Factory. Extra-special assistance was lent by C-Monster and WNYC in New York. This project was inspired by a tweet from Nina K. Simon.

First, I think this is a great collaboration of local Pittsburgh artists and organizations to make something for the whole art community. And the best part is that it’s free of course! If you have an iphone, simply fire up the app and take a photo of an object you want to check out to see if it is art… or not art.

Clearly this is an epic question that is nearly impossible to answer, but I love the humor the collaborators have injected into the app. From what I’ve seen, the results are actually pretty accurate! Also, it’s nice to have the content users are submitting added to the website on the fly if the app user chooses to do so. I’m a big fan of the super simple app interface. A job well done indeed to all those involved!

More Info: http://isthisart.org/

Filed under: Art, Technology

Yesterday Google announced a new application for Android phones called Google Goggles (We will see if this makes its way to the iPhone too).  The application allows you to take a photo of something and then it does a search based on the content of that photo.  Google highlights that this application works well when searching Landmarks, Books, Artworks, Places, and Logos.

(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. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Technology