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Google's AR Pocket Gallery turns your phone into an art museum
You can certainly view paintings on your phone, but you can't truly recreate the feeling of seeing a masterpiece in museum. Google thinks it can get close, though. The search giant has introduced a Pocket Gallery feature to its Arts & Culture app that uses augmented reality to create virtual art galleries, starting with one dedicated to classic Vermeer paintings (yes, including Girl with a Pearl Earring) curated by The Hague's Mauritshuis museum. Once you choose a room, you can walk up to paintings to both study them in detail and learn more about them. These are the highest-resolution images for eight of these paintings, according to Google
Textural printing lets you get handsy with famous paintings
The act of enjoying paintings and photography has always been a visual experience, one where you look, but don't touch. However, at the quinquennial (once every five years) Canon Expo this week, the company showed off new technology that might change your relationship with the images on your walls, turning them into objects your fingertips can appreciate as much as your eyes.
How Tim Jenison created 'Tim's Vermeer'
Tim Jenison may have been behind Video Toaster and LightWave, but he'll probably be remembered as the man who proved that Vermeer used technology to help him paint. In a lengthy piece over at BoingBoing, the inventor reveals the techniques that went into recreating the camera lucida used to paint Tim's Vermeer, as documented in the film of the same name. In addition to building an exact replica of the room depicted in The Music Lesson, Jenison wanted to only use hardware that the Dutch master himself could have used -- which led him to mill his own glass lenses, which he polished by hand. Oh, and did we mention that the film is now available to buy on Blu-ray? Because it is. [Image credit: Tim Jenison / BoingBoing]
Microsoft working on Vermeer, a 'touchable' 360-degree holographic display (video)
Touchable is a stretch when talking about Vermeer, but we'd definitely call it interactive. Instead of hiding the 360-degree display under an acrylic or glass dome it uses a parabolic reflector to float a 3D "object" in space and tracks hand motions with an IR sensor or Kinect. It's not unlike RePro3D, but with slightly less bulky hardware. Don't take our word for it though, check out the video after the break.
