New online resource for Gothic architecture

The team at the Media Center for Art  History at Columbia University have, over the past five years, put together a wonderful catalogue of photos, drawings, and plans of French Gothic architecture.  The site, Mapping Gothic France, lets the end user explore the content through the dimensions of Space, Time and Narrative.  The site also includes interactive maps, panoramas, and plans that show the angle and position of each photo.  And – the tools allow the user to do building comparisons (e.g. by nave height, aisle width, floor plan, elevation, and more).   A really wonderful use of new technologies.

Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten

A Slate essay revisits the iconic Charles and Ray Eames nine-minute film Powers of Ten created for IBM and narrated by physicist Philip Morrison. Illustrated with the video and a “Making of…” slideshow, the essay discusses the ground breaking process behind the awe-inspiring still and aerial photography that captures Chicago.

Experience the documenta 13 3D tour

For those who were unable to get to Kassel, Germany this summer for documenta 13, here’s your chance to virtually experience installations at all venues. The 360°-Tour offers participants numerous ways to navigate the vast system of projects: by visitor’s favorites (with accompanying video), by a room-by-room “walk through” of each venue, by individual works of art chosen from a map, or by artist. Additional projects are web based.

hat tip to Laurie Monahan

Britain from Above offers historic aerial photographs

The digital project Britain from Above currently contains over 16,000 images (taken between 1919-1953) from the Aerofilms Collection, an important and early aerial photography collection in the United Kingdom. Browse images by group, location or tags, or search by coordinates, date, or text. Users are free to download images or add tags; in fact, the site is asking for the public’s help in identifying unlocated images or sharing factual information about any image or the places and things within it.

via ArtDaily

More Google news: The World Wonders Project

Google’s World Wonders Project, together with partners UNESCO and World Monuments Fund among others, offers armchair travelers an opportunity to experience the built environment in far flung places throughout the globe. The project, once again utilizing Street View, is searchable by location or theme. Additionally, many sites feature videos and user-submitted photography.

New Google Street Views of the Amazon and Russian Highlights

Google Street View, which in the past created the Google Art Project, now offers the armchair tourist two new areas to explore: the Amazon River and Rain Forest or famous Russian buildings and parks. The unveiling of the Amazon collection coincides with World Forestry Day (March 21) and World Water Day (March 22) 2012 and includes behind-the-scenes videos of how they captured these spectacular views.

To experience other Google Street View collections, click here.

Zooming in to Daguerreotypes

Wired Magazine has a fascinating article about the conservation of a famous set of daguerreotypes.  In 1848 Charles Fontayne and William Porter created a “panorama” (actually eight separate plates) of the Cincinnati waterfront.  Because the plates were so big (6.5×8.5″) the detail in each is astonishing.

The plates had acquired a lot of dirt and damage over the years so conservators at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, did a painstaking job of restoration and cleaning.  The article includes a step by step description of how daguerreotypes are made and how they were restored.  But best of all are the high-quality reproductions of the daguerreotypes.  And they include one with a 10x  magnification function – you can practically zoom in to see individual faces!  They are rare and valuable documentation of a day in an American city over 150 years ago.

Travel the world via QTVR panoramas

Panoramas.dk, created by Danish photographer Hans Nyberg, is a site dedicated to offering a variety of interactive QTVR panoramas of cities, sites, or events. You can browse by the year a panorama was created or (farther down the page) by the location it depicts. To download the latest QuickTime player (free), click here.

Additional travel panorama sites can be found here and here.

New Sistine Chapel QTVR, courtesy of Villanova

For the last two years, students and faculty from Villanova University have had rare clearance to photograph a new state-of-the-art Virtual Reality Tour of the Sistine Chapel. The “tour”, a beautiful QTVR panorama with a classical music accompaniment, is on the Vatican website.

360 degrees and 26 Gigapixels of Paris

“Paris 26 Gigapixels” is a project that has stitched together 2346 single photos of Paris, resulting in a very high resolution (354159 x 75570 pixels!) 360 degree panorama view of the French capital.   You can pan manually, or allow it to play on a beautiful slow pan (accompanied by contagious Parisian music); you can zoom in,  and select specific areas and monuments.  You can read more about the project and logistics here.