When Technology Meets Culture

During the first week of October, Palazzo Giureconsulti opened its doors to visitors of “Grow with Google”, an interactive exhibition aiming at introducing the Google Arts and Culture project to Milanese audience and demonstrating the new technology to support it. Interestingly enough, the exhibition was accompanied by the series of seminars in digital marketing in the context of a cultural setting. Being an expert as no other, Google Arts and Culture became one of the most popular downloads with its recent viral campaign introducing а new “Art selfie” feature that allows to find your doppelgänger among art portraits by simply downloading its app.

Digital technology is drastically transforming many industries and the art world is no exception: both in terms of the emergence of new tools for artist’s creativity and accessibility of the artworks; as well as the establishment of new business models in the art market. Even the more traditional sector of cultural heritage is undergoing many changes in relation to administration and management of NPO institutions. So, what is the position of Google Arts and Culture platform in this context and in what ways does it influence the art sector?Google Arts and Culture project was established in 2011 guided by Google Cultural Institute – a nonprofit initiative whose mission is to bring the worlds cultural heritage online. Although it started mainly as an online archive with high resolution images, nowadays it is the biggest platform about art that takes the role of a content creator and a medium for the community of art lovers. Its unique features combine 360 degree tours in museums and galleries, virtual reality experience and “gigapixel” technology that enables to experience artworks in such close details that even allows to follow the brush strokes. Furthermore, it serves educational purposes as an online broadcasting channel of live Art Talks, engaging world’s curators, museums directors and historians.

Behind the scenes of the “gigapixel” technology

Consistent with the Google vision “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible”, the goal of the Art project is to bring culture online and to make it accessible to a wider audience. To reach its objectives Google uses partnerships with cultural institutions and by now it has built a wide network of over 1500 museums in more than 70 countries. Among the first ones to join the project were world’s most popular museums like Uffizi Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tate Gallery. However, Google keeps strengthening its global presence and actively partners with museums in Asia and the Middle East.At first, there were many hesitations from the side of galleries and museums about digitizing collections. Google team has been working very hard to overcome those doubts. It provided museums with technology and gave them an autonomy to decide what to put online. Another important point, since Google Cultural Institute is an NPO, it is stated in contractual obligations that Google cannot generate profit from the content. Thus, all the projects under the name of the Google Cultural Institute cannot have commercial nature. And finally, one of the most vital issues in digital environment was settled in favor of museums: it was agreed that all the copyrights belong to the latter, including the right to take down the content at any time, thus reassuring some institutions that they are in control of their collections. On the other hand, lately there has been a counter movement with regard to the copyright ownership among museums. For example, in 2017 Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its new “Open access” policy under which it foregoes all the rights (including commercial use) on the images of artworks it believes to be in public domain.

Google Arts & Culture platform

As often underlined by Amit Sood, the director of Google Cultural Institute, the project cannot replicate the physical experience of encountering an artwork, yet still bringing some challenges to museums. In the context of wider accessibility of artworks online, a modern museum is more than simply a storage room of objects, it is first of all a public space with a social dimension. Thus, its new role is in becoming a ground for education, information exchange, community formation and strengthening of cultural connections. Such reconfiguration of a traditional museum requires a large amount of investment and technological support.

Currently, many cultural organisations are successfully collaborating with Google Arts, by enabling the online guided tours or welcome videos of the galleries. Digitizing of the collection provides a matchless opportunity in terms of preservation of cultural heritage as it enables the sustenance of existing collection online, but also a recreation of once lost or damaged artifacts with the help of virtual reality. Besides, the technological turn can help to eliminate the problem of overcrowding of some museums or, on the contrary, to be used as a marketing tool for promotion. Though impossible to measure the exact correlation between art and digital, we can observe that technology contributes to support art sector and boosts the interest in culture.

In this new technologically transformed art reality Google Arts and Culture becomes a key player, being at the same time a platform to connect museums to third parties, a community of art enthusiasts, and an independent mediator who can act as a digital influencer. Furthermore, starting from this year Google has immersed in design through its debut at Milano Design Week 2018. We are looking forward to follow Google’s expansion into the world of design and witness its presence at the Salone del Mobile 2019.