White Space
Lukas Marti
A fellow designer Lukas Marti recently developed this website for a gallery in Zurich. What is worth highlighting is how the artists are showcased on the site. Instead of preselecting the artists work as most galleries/exhibitions/portfolios tend to do, the work is gathered from Google. All content is generated from what is readily available on the web. This of course puts a lot of questions forward, Are you less successful if your entries in Google are low? What happens if your name is common? etc.. Personally I think it is a very interesting move for both gallery and designer, knowing that it would cause an overdose of discussion with the artists.
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posted by tasha aulls
on 02 February 2008
interesting and potentially contentious
As many people probably turn to google image search when looking for images for a particular artist - It is an very interesting choice to provide this option within the context of the gallery.
Wonder how this will change the level of exclusivity each galleries hold or pretend to hold on a particular artists work, and how this may or may not impact the market.
Any chance of adding to the Google engine to get rid of all the non-artist related images that always turn up in any given search?
posted by Matt Cooper
on 04 February 2008
suits its content
in a world of syndicated content and Google's demi-god status its isn't surprising to find interesting and disarmingly simple solutions to web-based problems like this. There is, however, something inelegant about this particular site, it feels temporary - and possibly even fickle - in its execution which runs the risk of undermining the content.
I like the idea but wonder if Google is the best technology to piggyback here. Would Flickr do a better job? Should Google's results be a little more objectively filtered? I don't know, but it seems that using the 'plain' google style is heavy handed.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It is the kind of solution only an art gallery could get away with, and as Liza says; that in itself is justification.
posted by Malcolm Garrett
on 19 February 2008
blank canvas
I like the (almost) 'undesigned' look of this site. I like the photograph on the home page. I want to look around the corner to see what's in the next room. I like the flat yellow floating 'control panel' that stays where it's put no matter where you set the scroll behind it. I like that it's sort of in the way at all times. [I've argued with developers in the past about wanting similar kinds of functionality in sites I've worked on. And usually lost. I like that the designer of this site won that battle. The floating palette is a staple of every software program worth it's salt, but asking a developer to provide you with that same functionality, especially in a web environment, would seem to be tantamount to web heresy. Which is another reason for me to like it.]
I'm not sure if my personal jury is still out regarding the google image gallery though. It's brave to bundle up your own google references with whatever else gets thrown up... ...OK, I do like that.