You can now view Indonesian artwork online, thanks to Google Art Project. Museum Nasional Indonesia is one of the 151 cultural institutions to be involved, and The Museum Nasional Indonesia category at GoogleArtProject.com showcases 100 pieces of Indonesian art, ranging from batiks to historic artifacts. The user experience is pretty awesome if you have decent internet access. Onsite images are in HD for users to zoom in or out, so you can go in for a close look just like you could at a real museum. On average, the images are around 7 billion pixels which is about 1,000 times more detailed than an average digital camera can produce.
At Google Art Project, users are even able to customize their own galleries by adding art pieces that they like to form their own digital art collection. The images can be sorted/searched based on continent, name of museum, and name of artist. This video below will provide a clearer understanding on how it works.
This project is pretty ambitious in my opinion. I suspect that it is really expensive to digitize art pieces from across the globe. Google explains that the hi-resolution images of each museum piece was taken using professional cameras and computer systems that would then “multisynchronize” movement units in the pictures. Each image is actually formed by piecing together thousands of such photos. It is then tiled into smaller components to ensure efficient online viewing and also a fast zooming effect. Besides the Museum Nasional Indonesia, other Asian museums available on Google Art Project include one in Singapore, Delhi, and Taiwan. It is worth a look.
Some pictures at the event
