Part of the app’s mission is ease of use and accessibility. Hold it up to a Gustave Caillebotte still life, as I did, and the app provides information that’s already available on the wall, including the chance to click-to-learn-more. Smartify, on the other hand, wants to app-ify what was once the purview of an audio guide. Magnus doesn’t give you an art history lesson, or even much of a basic summary about a work like Shazam, it’s a little blip of information in the dark. “I loved that the app could scan a piece and give you the exact history of it, when it was last sold, and the price it was sold for. “I used to go to these art fairs, and I felt embarrassed or shy, because nothing’s listed,” Ms. Before trying the app, she said, the lack of information was a barrier. Jelena Cohen, a brand manager for Colgate-Palmolive, bought her first artwork, a photograph, at Frieze after using Magnus. Galleries rarely post prices and often don’t provide basic wall text, so one often has to ask for the title or even the artist’s name. Then there is a more salient question for these platforms: What information can an app provide that will enhance the user’s experience of looking at art? What can a Shazam for art really add? Resch said, complained about the uploading of images and data to the app in 2016, it was removed from the Apple Store for five months, but Apple ultimately reinstated Magnus after some disputed content was removed.Īnother issue is that image recognition technology still often lags when it comes to identifying 3D objects even a well-known sculpture can baffle apps with its angles, resulting in the deflating, endless spin of technology that’s “thinking” ad infinitum. Magnus contends that because the images are created and shared by users, the app is protected by the Digital Millennial Copyright Act. The reproduction of artwork can be a violation of the owner’s copyright. Magnus Resch, founder of the Magnus app, laid out one: “There is a lot more art in the world than there are songs.” Cataloging individual artworks based in unique locations is far more difficult.Ĭopyright law also poses challenges. There are some barriers particular to creating a Shazam for art. Magnus has built a database of more than 10 million images of art, mostly crowdsourced, and aims to help prospective art buyers navigate the notoriously information-lite arena of galleries and fairs. The art-oriented apps harness image recognition technology, each with a particular twist. There is Shazam for plants or Shazam for clothes and now, Shazam, for art. Shazam’s wild success - it boasts more than a billion downloads and 20 million uses daily, and was purchased by Apple for a reported $400 million last year - has spawned endless imitations. First came Shazam, an app that allows users to record a few seconds of a song and instantly identifies it. Magnus is part of a wave of smartphone apps trying to catalog the physical world as a way of providing instantaneous information about songs or clothes or plants or paintings. Magnus then slotted this information into a folder marked “My Art” for digital safekeeping - and future looking. In 2010, it had sold for $170,500 at Sotheby’s in New York, the app told me. It was titled “ Model With Empire State Building.” dated 1992, measured 72 inches by 60 inches, and was for sale for $300,000. The painting was by Philip Pearlstein, according to the app, known for reinvigorating the tradition of realist figure painting. I opened a smartphone app called Magnus, snapped a quick picture, and clicked “Use.” Seconds later, I got that addictive, satisfying click. At the Betty Cuningham gallery on the Lower East Side recently, I noticed an arresting painting: It showed a nude woman curled against a window, asleep, with the old New Yorker Hotel and Empire State Building in view and a fish above her, hanging or floating.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |