Fine Art - Virtual Galleries and Virtual Tours
(Aspects of a Multimedia Experience)
Professor John Hiller
University of New South Wales
Tuesday 5 March at 11am
Abstract
Galleries (museums) are digitising their collections.
One can log on to museum Web sites that provide hundreds (or thousands)
of images. The large museums have CDROMs that allow the viewer to
"explore the museum's . most beautiful rooms at [his] own pace".
The visit through this virtual world is conducted "in full-screen
interactive video . accompanied by commentaries on the rooms and
works .(from the Virtual Visit for The Louvre). Some of these are
general, others treat particular parts of the collections. The extent
of support for the images varies inversely with the extent of the
coverage. While the CDROMs are not multimedia, there are pointers
on how to generate a multimedia / multimodal experience.
A different slant on fine art comes from some television programs.
The peregrinations of Sister Wendy rate well as did the recent Rolf
Harris programs on the BBC. These have shown the audience for fine
art is wider than the cognoscente. The strong reaction to Rolf's
"dumbing down" presentations by a small segment pointed up the variety
of user requirements.
Digitisation has given us the data; the CDROMs show something about
organisation; the television programs provide clues on presentation.
An obvious development is to structure art experiences for the Web.
This talk will point up some technical issues, principally to do
with the interface and the navigation. It is conjectured that HCI
developments needed for art will find wider application. The talk
will touch on marketing issues and illustrate their effect on user
interaction.
Short resume
John Hiller was an academic at the University of New South
Wales for several decades. He worked in the areas of computing,
communications and librarianship. He was the Foundation Head of
the School of Computer Science & Engineering.
Professor Hiller spent periods in the university's administration.
Most recently he was responsible for the university's ERP development.
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