Openness of Digital Images
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This presentation was presented at the ARLIS/NA + VRA 2016 in Seattle, United States. It shared about the concept of openness of digital images and how it applied in museums, discussed the opportunities to art librarianship and suggested some future explorations to improve the openness in digital images.
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Openness of Digital Images
- 1. Hedren Sum New Media and Design Librarian Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Dr. Lee Chu Keong Senior Lecturer Nanyang Technological University, Singapore P R E S E N T E D B Y O P E N N E S S OF DIGITAL IMAGES Presented by
- 3. Open as a toggle switch Images: Switch edited by Arthur Shlain and Equalizer by Creative Stall from the Noun Project To make something freely available for simultaneous access and reuse for different purposes in the digital environment (D’Antoni, 2009; McMartin, 2008)
- 4. Openness as an equalizer board Open as a toggle switch Images: Switch edited by Arthur Shlain and Equalizer by Creative Stall from the Noun Project
- 5. Context / User perceptions Where can I use them? What is openness to me? Terms of Use / Usage Conditions How can I use them properly? Platform / User Experience What the collection have? How can I browse or find what I need? Extent of Use How much can I use?
- 6. EDUCATION The principal purpose of art museums is (Association of Art Museum Directors, 2011) Image: View of the Grand Salon Carré in the Louvre by Giuseppe Castiglione (1861)
- 7. Over the years, with the continuous development of digital technology, museums have been opening up their content and create more ways to experience their digital images. Image: A Creative World of Digital Play permanent exhibition by ArtScience Museum Singapore and TeamLabs
- 10. “ScopifyROM” app by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)Mobile app and mobile-friendly website by Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
- 11. "Touch Van Gogh" app by Van Gogh Museum
- 14. Library and Institutional collections Stock images and photo communities Web image archives & aggregators Other open sources of images
- 16. What does all these got to do with art librarianship?
- 17. Going beyond what we have in our holdings Image: NTU Libraries via Flickr
- 18. Images: Background by NTU Libraries via Flickr; Instructor by Ed Gray, pencil cup by parkjisun and ideation by Transfer Studio from the Noun Project TEACH ADVISE BUILD
- 19. Include the use of open images in instructional classes for art, design and media students Image: NTU Libraries via Flickr TEACH
- 20. More emphasis added on… • Visual research / review • Appropriate use of images TEACH Image: akokce.wordpress.com
- 21. Which image to choose?
- 22. Librarian’s Role • Design lesson activities with faculty • Select appropriate image sources for different uses • Emphasize on the appropriate use of images … TEACH
- 23. Recommend open image sources for research projects Avant-Garde explorations in fashion design with Asst. Prof. Galina Mihaleva ADVISE
- 25. ADVISE Librarian’s Role • Understand the research or project requirements of the user • Search and select relevant image sources • Advise on the appropriate use of images …
- 26. BUILD Develop an open image collection to showcase and promote scholarship “Online Database of illustrations by Bagyi Aung Soe” with Asst. Prof. Yin Ker aungsoeillustrations.org
- 29. Librarian’s Role • Develop metadata structure • Advise on copyright and terms of use • Classify the content of the collection • Oversee the design of the web user experience … BUILD
- 30. What’s next?
- 31. • Rich visual browsing and exploration using alternative interfaces • Immersive experiences using virtual reality (VR) Areas for further exploration
- 33. Current collection interfaces are dominated by search Image: Search by Timothy Smith from The Noun Project.
- 34. Image: View of the Grand Salon Carré in the Louvre by Giuseppe Castiglione (1861) How do we browse?
- 35. How do we explore?
- 36. Mitchell Whitelaw Associate Professor Faculty of Arts and Design University of Canberra, Australia Collection interfaces dominated by search are stingy, or ungenerous: they don’t provide adequate context, and they demand the user make the first move. By contrast, there seems to be a move towards more open, exploratory and generous ways of presenting collections, building on familiar web conventions and extending them.
- 40. Image: The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch (1500 - 1505)
- 41. Image: Scenes from Bosch VR (GIF by Allison Meier via Vimeo) Bosch VR by Burrell Durrant Hifle (BDH) Design & Direction Limited
- 42. Physical Collections Open image collections Immersive experiences Roles of Art Librarians
- 43. Hedren Sum hedrensum@ntu.edu.sg Linkedin: hedrensum Dr. Lee Chu Keong ascklee@ntu.edu.sg P R E S E N T E D B Y O P E N N E S S OF DIGITAL IMAGES
Editor's Notes
- Greetings everyone. I am Hedren, New Media and Design Librarian at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore. With me today is Dr. Lee Chu Keong who is teaching at NTU.
- First, in today digital world, open is about making something freely available for simultaneous access and reuse for different purposes in the digital environment.
- Well. It is like a toggle switch. It is to make something freely available for simultaneous access and reuse for different purposes in today’s digital environment.
- However, it may not only be viewed as a ‘simple binary concept’ but also, the construct of openness‘. In this case, like an equalizer board where you can set the different facets according to your different needs. Dr. Lee here has led to developing these analogies.
- When we talk about openness, we are actually talking about quite a few things, which include: the extent of use (how much can I use?), the terms of use (how can I use them properly?), the context (where can I use them and what is openness to me), and the platform and user experience (what the collection have, how can I browse or find what I need to use?).
- To put things into context, let’s look at openness in art museums. From being places of discussion to cabinet of curiosities, storage areas to today places of learning and scholarship, museums have developed significantly over the years. However, the fundamental purpose remains the same – that is education.
- With the continuous development of digital technology, museums have been opening up their content to create interactive experiences on the web and mobile.
- Today, museums can be largely seen to have their own digital collections on the web. In fact, my research on the top 100 art museums worldwide have shown 67 of them having digital collections. Such image databases allow us to explore images and the details of their holdings anytime and anywhere in the world.
- Some even go to the extend to create tools and alterative experiences to access their content. For example, in 2013, Rjiksmuseum launched the Rijks Studio app to allow users to curate their own user collections. They also encourage the reuse of the images to create new products and designs. With their app, the images became powerful inspirational or reference resources and you cannot imagine what users can do with them.
- Others such as MoMa provide mobile-friendly websites that acts as a museum guide when touring their collections in the museum. Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) provides an app, ScopifyROM, to allow users to view their collections in an highly interactive manner via their mobile devices, such as x-ray visions of artworks.
- Van Gogh Museum provides a iPad app that allow users to view the paintings in their original state (before correction) or and brief sketches behind the painting.
- Museums can also seen to extend the access of their collections through other existing platforms, such as Flickr…
- … and Google Art Project. Each of these platforms come with special features to store and view digital images. For instance, Google Art Project allow users to view artworks in super high-resolution – so high that you can even see the texture of the paint. Other features include allowing users to compare among different artworks.
- Other than museums, there are also other sources that provide images for open use. They include web image archives and aggregators, Library and institutional collections, and stock images and photo communities.
- We have extended the research and study to these other sources as well, and compile the findings in a blog, which we called Open Image Collections. It also act as a digital resource where users can search for image sources suitable for teaching, learning and research. Each record is comes with description, notes on usage, openness level and other metadata, such as subject, style period, work types, using the VRA Metadata Schema and relevant thesauri.
- However, what does all these got to do with art librarianship?
- Well, it is about going beyond what we currently have in our holdings.
- To illustrate, here are three areas - Teach, Advise and Build.
- First of all, teach, that is about including the use of open images in instructional classes.
- In the realm of art, design and media, there are more expectations to go beyond the use of traditional materials (like books and journals). Lately, the School of Art, Design and Media in NTU added more emphasis on on students to conduct proper visual research or review, and how can they find and use images (including moving images) appropriately in their school work.
- Students today, like any of us, very often if not always, start with Google to search for images. They have absolutely no problem with entering the search term and press “Enter”. However, when come to choosing the right image and using it appropriately, that’s another story. For instance, if you enter “Woman with the water pitcher” and search, you will find this set of search results. So which image to choose?
- Therefore, we played a strong role in this area of instructional. Late last year, we designed and conducted two classes targeting final year students in visual communication and product design. Working together with the area coordinators, we designed the lesson activities, select relevant image sources for different uses and emphasis on the appropriate use of images from such sources, including checking the terms of use and attribution.
- The next area is advise. One area that librarians can do is to recommend relevant open image sources for research projects. Recently, one of our faculty, Asst. Prof. Galina Mihaleva is working on an Avant-Garde collection for an upcoming exhibition in Scottsdale museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona. She seeks assistance to find images that she can get inspirations from or use in her designs, particularly on nature and bio-art. We then selected a list of image sources from the open image collections and send them over. From there, she proceed to browse and select relevant images for her designs.
- Here is an example on how Galina used drawings by Ernst Haeckel and incorporate the graphical elements into her designs.
- The role which we played here is actually very similar to what librarians have been doing – that is offering research assistance. We gather and understand her requirements, search and select the relevant image sources and advise on how to them. Just that now, it is on images and visual resources.
- Finally, build. We can apply the fundamental meaning of openness and apply it in our work. One possibility is to collaborate and build an open image collection to showcase and promote scholarship. One of such projects is this database, the Online Database of illustrations by Bagyi Aung Soe. It all started from a casual conversation with Asst. Prof. Yin Ker that we learnt that she studied the works of the Myanmar contemporary artist Bagyi Aung Soe in her PhD. She explained the difficulties in getting access to the materials in Myanmar during research. And now since she have done it, we suggest to make use of the connections she built with the institutions in Myanmar, and capture the illustrations in a form a digital collection.
- And now, we have it - a comprehensive collection of more than 4,200 illustrations by the Myanmar artist all in one place. It was launched on beta at the Dhaka Art Summit last month.
- Relevant metadata is included for each image. User can browse by different fields and click to view the basic description and related images. More images and details will be added later and the database is expected to grow to more than 5,000 images with accompanying materials.
- Here are the roles that the library and I have played in this project, which include: developing the metadata structure, which is key to the overall retrieval of the images., encouraging her to put the images on an appropriate creative commons license for reuse, writing the term of use, and working on the design of the database, which include classifying the illustrations and the web user experience.
- We have covered the concept of openness, museum as open image sources and some possibilities for art librarianship. We are coming to the end of my presentation what what’s next?
- Well, we can look into two areas to enhance the richness and extend the openness of digital collections: Rich visual browsing and exploration using alternative interfaces and Immersive experiences using virtual reality. Actually, we are already started working on this.
- First, we can add in additional visual layers to explore the content of the digital image databases. These are infographics and information dashboards that we created for Aung soe illustrations. Other than browsing the images in the database in a prescribed manner, these visual layers allow users to explore the content in alternative ways to find new relationships and patterns and study information in different perspectives on their own.
- Next, we are in the Google generation. However, current collection interfaces are dominated by search. Search can help us to find specific content that we need, but it may not represent the scale and richness of the collection.
- Let’s go back to this painting of the Louvre by Giuseppe Castiglione. Can we imagine and think about how do we look at artworks in a museum? How do we browse them?
- How do we explore? How can we bring this physical museum experience into the digital world?
- Mitchell Whitelaw, Assoc. Professor at the University of Canberra, has been working on a project to develop ways to visualize archival datasets. According to him, “collection interfaces dominated by search are stingy, or ungenerous: they don’t provide adequate context, and they demand the user make the first move. By contrast, there seems to be a move towards more open, exploratory and generous ways of presenting collections, building on familiar web conventions and extending them”. He therefore introduced the concept of generous interfaces.
- Generous interfaces emphasize on browsing and visual exploration, and bringing out the richness of the digital collection. Whitelaw has worked on several projects to test out this concept. One of them is for the Centre for Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia. He created several views to explore the digital collections. For example, this one allow users to browse the collection by a timeline.
- Next, anybody heard about this? Yes. Google Cardboard. We used to think that equipment and software for virtual reality or VR are expensive, and not for everyone. Well, they still are, but now there are affordable alternatives like Google Cardboard. You can build your own VR viewer by following given instructions from cardboard. Developers can use their open-source software development kits to generate content. It is an affordable way to build immersive experiences.
- As of December 2015, there are more than 25 million of such VR apps, according to Google.
- And here is one of them. The Gardens of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch is one of my favourite paintings.
- So to celebrate the influences of Bosch, who died exactly 500 years ago, a VR app, known as Bosch VR is created to allow you to explore the painting from an inside perspective – well going into the painting literally. It is created BDH Design, who produced several award-winning documentaries.
- When we talk about openness, we are actually talking about quite a few things, which include: the extent of use (how much can I use?), the terms of use (how can I use them properly?), the context (where can I use them and what is openness to me), and the platform and user experience (what the collection have, how can I browse or find what I need to use?).
- Okay, that’s all we have. Thank you for your attention.