Tag Archives: Arts and Culture

“Dancing with a machine:” Bill T. Jones on AI and art

In early 2019, the Google Creative Lab partnered with Bill T. Jones, a pioneering choreographer, two-time Tony Award Winner, MacArthur Fellow, National Medal of the Arts Honoree, and artistic director and co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company of New York Live Arts. We teamed up to explore the creative possibilities of speech recognition and PoseNet, which is Google’s machine-learning model that estimates human poses in real time in the browser.

We sat down with Bill to hear his reflections on working at the intersection of art, technology, identity and the body. Try out the experiments and watch a short film about the collaboration at g.co/billtjonesai. 

Why did you collaborate with Google on AI experiments?

The idea of machine learning intrigues me. The theme of our company’s Live Ideas Fest this year is artificial intelligence. AI is supposed to take us into the next century and important things are supposed to be happening with this technology, so I wanted to see if we could use it to stir real human emotion. Maybe it’s ego, but I want to be the one to know how to use PoseNet to make somebody cry. How do you get the technology to be weighted with meaning and import?

How have you experimented with technology over the course of your career?

Back in the ‘80s, Arnie Zane [Jones’s partner and company co-founder] and I decided we didn’t want to work with technology anymore because the pure art of sweat and bodies on stage should be enough. Technology just steals your thunder. Then a friend said, “Technology can suggest the beyond. Technology can project what is at stake when you die. When you see these figures, they’re no longer human, they’re something else.” So we started working with more state-of-the-art technologies. Later, I did a project called “Ghostcatching” with 3D motion capture. At that time, the team was saying, “we want to capture your movement so that in 50 years we could reconstitute your performance.” That’s how people were thinking years ago, and seems to still be a preoccupation now. They said they wanted to “decouple me from my personality.” Maybe I’m romantic, but I don't think that’s possible. So, my focus with this project was not on how to replace the performer, but complement them.

What was it like experimenting with AI?

I’ve never collaborated with a machine before. It's a whole other learning curve. We are taught in the art world that you don’t get many chances. This experience contrasted that notion. It was refreshing to co-create with the Google team whose approach was playful and iterative.

Were there moments you felt this technology was in the service of dance? 

In the service of dance? I say this with great respect: it's almost antithetical to everything I thought dance was. The webcam’s field of vision determines a lot about how we move. Dance for us is often times in an empty room that implies infinite space. But working with a webcam, there is a very prescribed space. Limitations are not bad in art making, but they were a new challenge. It was a shift creating something for the screen and not the stage.

What was it like shifting from creating for the stage to the screen?

I felt like I was being asked: Come out of the place that you as an artist come from, the avant-garde. Come and work with a medium that's available to millions of people. That's wonderful, but it's also a responsibility. The meaningful things people make with this are going to be very weird in a way, aren't they? Very kind of exciting. I'm appreciative of being part of the development of this.

Where do you see AI going? Will you work with it more in the future? 

I understand context is the next frontier in machine learning. This seems paramount for art making. I hope one day soon they make a machine I can dance with. I’d like to dance with a machine, just to see what that’s like.

Dancing with a machine: Bill T. Jones on AI and art

In early 2019, the Google Creative Lab partnered with Bill T. Jones, a pioneering choreographer, two-time Tony Award Winner, MacArthur Fellow, National Medal of the Arts Honoree, and artistic director and co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company of New York Live Arts. We teamed up to explore the creative possibilities of speech recognition and PoseNet, which is Google’s machine-learning model that estimates human poses in real time in the browser.

We sat down with Bill to hear his reflections on working at the intersection of art, technology, identity and the body—you can try out the experiments and watch a short film about the collaboration.

Why did you collaborate with Google on AI experiments?

The idea of machine learning intrigues me. The theme of our company’s Live Ideas Fest this year is artificial intelligence. AI is supposed to take us into the next century and important things are supposed to be happening with this technology, so I wanted to see if we could use it to stir real human emotion. Maybe it’s ego, but I want to be the one to know how to use PoseNet to make somebody cry. How do you get the technology to be weighted with meaning and import?

How have you experimented with technology over the course of your career?

Back in the ‘80s, Arnie Zane [Jones’s partner and company co-founder] and I decided we didn’t want to work with technology anymore because the pure art of sweat and bodies on stage should be enough. Technology just steals your thunder. Then a friend said, “Technology can suggest the beyond. Technology can project what is at stake when you die. When you see these figures, they’re no longer human, they’re something else.” So we started working with more state-of-the-art technologies. Later, I did a project called “Ghostcatching” with 3D motion capture. At that time, the team was saying, “we want to capture your movement so that in 50 years we could reconstitute your performance.” That’s how people were thinking years ago, and seems to still be a preoccupation now. They said they wanted to “decouple me from my personality.” Maybe I’m romantic, but I don't think that’s possible. So, my focus with this project was not on how to replace the performer, but complement them.

What was it like experimenting with AI?

I’ve never collaborated with a machine before. It's a whole other learning curve. We are taught in the art world that you don’t get many chances. This experience contrasted that notion. It was refreshing to co-create with the Google team whose approach was playful and iterative.

Were there moments you felt this technology was in the service of dance? 

In the service of dance? I say this with great respect: it's almost antithetical to everything I thought dance was. The webcam’s field of vision determines a lot about how we move. Dance for us is often times in an empty room that implies infinite space. But working with a webcam, there is a very prescribed space. Limitations are not bad in art making, but they were a new challenge. It was a shift creating something for the screen and not the stage.

What was it like shifting from creating for the stage to the screen?

I felt like I was being asked: Come out of the place that you as an artist come from, the avant-garde. Come and work with a medium that's available to millions of people. That's wonderful, but it's also a responsibility. The meaningful things people make with this are going to be very weird in a way, aren't they? Very kind of exciting. I'm appreciative of being part of the development of this.

Where do you see AI going? Will you work with it more in the future? 

I understand context is the next frontier in machine learning. This seems paramount for art making. I hope one day soon they make a machine I can dance with. I’d like to dance with a machine, just to see what that’s like.

Source: Google Chrome


Create a personalized poem, with the help of AI

POEMPORTRAITS is an online collective artwork, experimenting at the boundaries of AI and human collaboration—a combination of poetry, design and machine learning. A POEMPORTRAIT is your self portrait overlaid with a unique poem, created by AI. Starting today, you can create your own and contribute to the evolving, collective poem.

To create your POEMPORTAIT, head to g.co/poemportraits. Once you get there, you’ll be asked to donate a word of your choice and take a self portrait. Each word you donate will be expanded into original lines of poetry by an algorithm that’s trained on millions of words of nineteenth century poetry. You’ll then receive a unique POEMPORTRAIT of your face, illuminated by your original lines of poetry. All of the lines of poetry are then combined to form an ever-evolving, collective poem.

To create the technology behind POEMPORTRAITS, I collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab and Ross Goodwin. Ross trained an algorithm to learn to write poems by reading over 25 million words written by 19th century poets. It works a bit like predictive text: it doesn’t copy or rework existing phrases, but uses its training material to build a complex statistical model. As a result, the algorithm generates original phrases emulating the style of what it’s been trained on.

The resulting poems can be surprisingly poignant, and at other times nonsensical. And it’s the profoundly human way that we seek and find personal resonance in machine-generated text that’s the essence of this project. I was inspired by the writing of Shoshana Zuboff on the “information civilization”—she writes, “If the digital future is to be our home then it is we who must make it so.”

Here’s my POEMPORTRAIT; the word I chose to donate was “convergence.”

Es Devlin's "POEMPORTRAIT," a photo of herself overlaid with words of a custom poem.

Create your unique POEMPORTRAIT and become part of this ever-growing global poem atg.co/poemportraits.

On World Heritage Day, explore historic sites in 3D

Last year on World Heritage Day, CyArk launched Open Heritage on Google Arts & Culture to showcase the technology used for heritage preservation around the world. This year, we’re expanding the project further. Our goal isn’t just to digitally preserve heritage sites at risk, but to make their stories and the data we collected available to future generations of researchers, educators and students.

In addition to bringing new heritage locations and their stories to Google Arts & Culture, this year Historic Environment Scotland and the University of South Florida—organizations with a shared commitment to opening their 3D datasets to the world—have also joined the Open Heritage project. Together, we’re launching Open Heritage 3D, a dedicated portal for sharing 3D cultural heritage data and its results with everyone.

  • The Temple of Apollo, a structure at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean.

    Explore the Temple of Apollo, or Portara—an unfinished Greek temple said to offer one of the most enchanting sunsets in Greece.

  • The Neolithic Orkely, ceremonial stone circles.

    Discover the 5,000 year old ceremonial buildings at the heart of Neolithic Orkney.

  • The Jefferson Memorial, a large white building with columns in West Potomac Park, in Washington, D.C.

    The Thomas Jefferson Memorialhonors one of America's founding fathers.

  • The "spider web" wooden ceiling of the Lukang Longshan Temple.

    Discover Lukang Longshan Temple's impressive architectural features including painted murals, wood carvings and the largest spider web wooden ceiling in Taiwan.

  • The front of the Masjid Wazir Khan, an ornately decorated Mughal-era mosque.

    Dive into the intricate details of the Masjid Wazir Khan, the most ornately decorated Mughal-era mosque.

  • Launch Complex 34, a rocket launch site.

    Historic photo from 1963 of Launch Complex 34 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

  • The Tomb of Emperor Tu Duc, surrounded by trees and a pond.

    Wander the streets of Vietnam's old imperial city and explore the majestic Tomb of Emperor Tu Duc.

At CyArk, we carry out this mission through 3D documentation. In 2018, we traveled to Mexico City to support restoration efforts following the devastating earthquake that struck there in 2017. Our efforts included the 3D documentation of the city’s enormous cathedral. It’s one of many cultural heritage sites across the world facing unprecedented challenges from natural disasters, climate change, human conflict and urban encroachment. Today, we’re adding the data collected during the Mexico City project to Google Arts & Culture, along with 29 other endangered sites around the globe, including the Temple of Apollo in Greece, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in the U.S. and the Tomb of Tu Ducin Vietnam.

A 3D rendering of Mexico City's cathedral.

3D model of Mexico City’s Cathedral.

Since we began this project last year, the data has been downloaded thousands of times, used to create 3D printed temples from Thailand and incorporated into VR experiences that let you explore an ancient city. Five of the new locations available today are in Damascus, Syria, a city impacted by civil war. From 2016 to 2017, we embarked upon an extensive training program for young professionals from the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums in Lebanon, providing them with the tools and skills to document their heritage. Teaching our 3D documentation methodology is a core part of our mission and is becoming increasingly more important as organizations around the world adopt the use of 3D recording technologies.

Two people standing behind a camera at the Temple of Eshmun.

Photogrammetry at the Temple of Eshmun.

You can explore more stories by visiting g.co/openheritage, downloading the Android or iOS app or visiting Google Arts & Culture.

Kansas City is buzzing: explore it with Google Arts & Culture

In January 17, 1920, under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition began in America. As the rest of the U.S. started drying out, Kansas City, Missouri filled its glass and earned the nickname “Paris of the Plains.” Thanks to political boss Tom Pendergast, who laid down the law in KC, the booze continued to flow. When asked how he was able to justify ignoring Prohibition, Pendergast simply explained, “the people are thirsty.” Journalist Edward Morrow quipped at the time, “if you want to see some sin, forget about Paris and go to Kansas City.”  

If you’re parched for more historical information about this Midwestern metropolis, here are seven things you can now discover on Google Arts & Culture—no speakeasy password required for entry. Today, Kansas City is a place where BBQ smoke rings meet finer things, where contemporary creatives cross cultural icons and where architectural treasures are housed in vibrant neighborhoods.

  • Unidentified female singer with nine member jazz band

    Read about the unique style of jazz that flourished in Kansas City and the rise and fall of political boss Tom Pendergast’s power in online stories from the Kansas City Public Library.

  • Burnt Ends from Scott's Kitchen

    Burnt ends, the smoky, crispy-yet-juicy dish cut from the brisket tip, has been a KC BBQ staple since Arthur Bryant’s started passing pieces out for free while customers waited in line.

  • View from the Liberty Memorial

    See KC in 360 degrees: catch a panoramic view of the skyline from the top of the Liberty Memorial Tower at National WWI Museum and Memorial.

  • I Want You for U.S. Army - WWI Poster

    In World War I, the poster, previously the successful medium of commercial advertising, was recognized as a means of spreading national propaganda with near unlimited possibilities. Explore iconic posters at the National WWI Museum and Memorial.

  • Exterior shot of the Kauffman Center of the Performing Arts

    Moshe Safdie, architect for the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, wanted the viewer to see music and movement in every angle.

  • Kansas City Monarchs baseball team

    The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) celebrates and honors the history of African American Baseball. The Kansas City Monarchs were the longest-running franchise in the history of baseball's Negro Leagues. Jackie Robinson was among their star players.

  • Postcard of Kansas City's Coney Island

    Dubbed “Kansas City’s Coney Island,” Electric Park became the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Disney World.

1. Time travel back to the Roaring Twenties: Want to know how the city earned its reputation as a wide-open town? Read about the unique style of jazz that flourished and the rise and fall of one Pendergast’s power in online stories from the Kansas City Public Library. From there, you can keep getting your history fix by checking out early footage of KC from the Kansas City Museum. Get to know the Man from Missouri—President Harry S. Truman—in 360 degree imagery, from his personal home at the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site to a replica of his Oval Office at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum.

2. Check out KC’s culinary chronicles: We’d be remiss to not brag about the place where burnt ends were born - get the inside scoop with Visit KC. Or go beyond BBQ and get Jenny Vergara’s take on the thriving local culinary scene.

3. See KC in 360 degrees: Tour of some of Kansas City’smost beloved neighborhoods, from West Bottoms to Westport.  Continue your virtual tour with sites ranging from a former storage building (now the National Archives at Kansas City) to a panoramic view of the skyline from the top of the Liberty Memorial Tower at National WWI Museum and Memorial.

4. Marvel at the masterpieces of Missouri: Zoom into ultra high resolution images of artworks from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (including Missouri’s own George Caleb Bingham), get to know some of the renowned alumni of the Kansas City Art Institute and discover cutting edge contemporary artists from the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

5. Admire the local architectural: While KC is said to have been built with more boulevards than Paris, more fountains than Rome, the city today stands full of architectural gems. Explore including the renowned Kauffman Center for Performing Arts and the City of Fountains on Google Earth.

6. Stand at the intersection of where the blues meets baseball: Get to know the 18th and Vine neighborhood with a historical overview from the Black Archives of Mid-America, experience neon signs of jazz clubs past in virtual reality at the American Jazz Museum. Take a swing at learning more about the team Jackie Robinson represented, the Kansas City Monarchs, thanks to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

7. Find inspiration from KC’s creatives: The city has served as the inspiration for a broad range of creatives, from Bob Dylan to Norman Rockwell. Get to know a few of the inventions we have Kansas Citians to thank for, the park that inspired Walt Disney World with the Jackson County Historical Society and the songs, TV shows, and movies that portray the city.

The vivacious spirit that once flowed through KC during the Prohibition era is more present than ever today. And now, anyone, anywhere can experience Kansas City by visiting g.co/kansascity, downloading the Android or iOS app or visiting Google Arts & Culture.

Get a taste of Spanish culinary history on Google Arts & Culture

The last time you enjoyed a flavorful spoonful of gazpacho, you probably didn't stop to think about how the Spanish dish became a popular staple on restaurant menus worldwide. Made of sun-ripened tomatoes, vinegar and garlic, the dish was once only enjoyed by the poorest communities in Andalucia. Yet by the 18th century, gazpacho’s undeniable deliciousness brought it from modest farm tables all the way into the most opulent dining rooms—including the Royal Palace of Madrid’s Gala Dining Hall.

A dish tastes better when you know its history. In that spirit, Google Arts & Culture has worked with the Royal Academy of Gastronomy in Spain to present “Spain: an Open Kitchen.” It’s the most comprehensive online exhibition on Spanish cuisine to date and the first time Google Arts & Culture has focused on a standalone retrospect about a country’s culinary culture.

In the Spain: an Open Kitchen exhibit, you can discover the stories behind Spanish cuisine.

Enjoy scrumptious stories from all over Spain and meet the people who shaped the cultural legacy that has turned the country into a global culinary superpower: there’s chef Ferran Adrià who turned beach bar elBulli on the Costa Brava into the most famous restaurant in the world. Or learn the story of gastronomic pioneer Clara María González de Amezúa, who has left her mark with the creation of Alambique—a cooking school that has played a key role in the evolution of cooking in Spain.

"Spain: an Open Kitchen" features more than 60 exhibitions and editorial features, the voices of more than 60 food experts and over 2,000 images, sketches, videos—some which, like Ferran Adrià’s creative notebooks, have been made public for the very first time. We carved up these exciting ingredients into three major chapters: “The Faces” (the people behind Spain's remarkable food culture); “the Flavors” (the traditional tastes and dishes of the region like Iberico ham and tapas); and "the Fusion" (decoding what happens when food meets art, architecture and culture).

  • Elena Arzak.

    Learn more about Ferran Adrià, one of the best chefs in the world, and about the women like Elena Arzak revolutionizing Spanish cuisine.

  • Ingredients needed to make gazpacho.

    Discover the origins of the world's best known dishes such as tapas, paëlla or tortilla.

  • A map of the wine regions in Spain.

    Browse the an interactive illustrated map of Spanish wine regions.

  • Food notes and sketches by Ferran Adria.

    Study food notes and sketches by Michelin star cook Ferran Adria, published online for the first time.

  • Marques de Riscal winery.

    Embark on a virtual tour through wineries designed by renowned architects like Norman Foster

    https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/OwJyUzZMorzRJg

    or Frank Gehry.

  • Japanese cuisine.

    Let yourself be surprised by the culinary parallels between Spain and Japan.

  • A dish by Ángel León.

    Glimpse the future of Spanish gastronomy.

Hungry for more? "Spain: an Open Kitchen" offers a feast of content for your enjoyment. Take a seat next to Ferran Adria as he goes through a one hour menu tastingor takes on a creative challenge with YouTube  creators, enjoy a 360 tour inside the cellars of Portia winery designed by architect Norman Foster, or discover expert insights into what the future of gastronomy may hold.

Download the Google Arts & Culture Android or iOS app, join the conversation on #SpainOpenKitchen and explore Spain’s Open Kitchen as you learn more about the history behind your favorite Spanish dish.

Explore millennia of human inventions in one exhibition

New inventions have fueled fantasies and shaped human society—from the first stone tools to robotic arms, steam engines to jet propulsion, pieces of paper to the internet, and hieroglyphics to emoji. Take the telescope, for example. Today, the Hubble Space Telescope orbits 340 miles above the Earth, capturing crisp images of 10,000 galaxies that are up to 13 billion years old. The idea for the telescope was born in 1608 from Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey's idea, and Galileo Galileo later improved the design, then pointed it at the sky.

Today, we’re celebrating the objects dreamt up and created by inventors, scientists and dreamers. Thanks to over 110 institutions, as well as dedicated curators and archivists from 23 countries around the world, you can explore a millennia of human progress in Once Upon a Try,now available on Google Arts and Culture. With over 400 interactive collections, it’s the largest online exhibition about inventions and discoveries ever created.

In addition to the exhibition, you can download a “Big Bang” augmented reality app, which we developed in collaboration with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In the app, you’ll embark on an epic 360-degree journey through the birth and evolution of the universe. With Tilda Swinton as your guide, witness the formation of the very first stars and watch planet Earth take shape in the palm of your hand. Using Google’s machine learning, you can also explore NASA's vast archive of 127,000 historic images with a new tool called NASA's Visual Universe. See the history of discoveries and missions, or search for a term to learn more about the space agency. You can also tour the Space Shuttle Discovery—based in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum—in 360 degrees, with the astronauts who once called it home as your hosts.

A demonstration of the Big Bang augmented reality app, narrated by Tilda Swinton.

Within the Once Upon a Try exhibition, you can dive into Street View to tour the sites of great discoveries, from the deep underground of CERN to the high-in-the-sky International Space Station. Zoom into 200,000 artifacts in high definition, like the first map of the Americas and Saturn and its 62 moons. Get the lowdown on big inventions (from emoji to the toilet), or hear five inspirational scientists talk about superpowers—like shapeshifting—that are being created through science. Meet the Einsteins and Curies, or learn more about champions behind the scenes—like Chewang Norphel, the man single-handedly combating climate change with artificial glaciers, or Mary Anning, the pioneering female paleontologist who discovered the pterodactyl.

Woven through the exhibition are tales of lucky accidents, epic fails and even people who died for their projects—like Röntgen’s fluke discovery of x-rays, Isaac Peral’s ingenious electric submarine that never launched and Marie Curie’s quest to find polonium, which led to her own death from radioactive poisoning. Despite these setbacks, human endeavour is a never-ending journey—and you can imagine that only a few things are as exhilarating as that “eureka” moment when everything falls into place. Get all the tips you need to become and inventor, and learn why it’s important to embrace failure through the stories of pioneers like Ada Lovelace, Mae Jemison and Chien-Shiung Wu.

We hope this tribute to human discovery inspires a new generation of creators to be curious, to seek what lies beyond the known and to try something new. Explore “Once Upon a Try” on Google Arts & Culture or via our iOS or Android app and join the conversation on #OnceUponaTry.

Inspired to move: Celebrating dance and Black History Month

My love for dance started in my youth when I took ballet lessons in Colorado. Like the other ballerinas, I’d slip on my satin slippers, wrap my ballet skirt on and glide across the wood floors to the beat of the music. Though unlike the other dancers, I was one of the only black girls in class.

Luckily, that didn’t stop me from coming back again and again—ballet enthralled me. I didn’t exactly exude the talent of an emerging prima ballerina. I wasn’t a dance prodigy, and my father would lovingly remind me of that. 

But my father also pointed out something else that was much more important: the pure joy that dance brought me. He told me to hold on to that, and I did. Ballet has become my lifelong hobby. It has followed me through my studies at Howard University and Harvard Business School, and to my career at Google in New York City. Even now, I make it a point to attend at least one ballet class a week. 

It’s not just dance itself that inspires me, but all of the people who have contributed to its history and paved the way for others. Contemporary dancers like Misty Copeland, the American Ballet Theatre’s first African American female principal dancer and a reminder of how far we’ve come; Raven Wilkinson, a black ballerina who performed in the segregated South in the 1950s; and Arthur Mitchell, who helped start the nation’s first major black ballet company and opened up the world of ballet to a much wider audience. 

  • Curtain call with Misty Copeland and Raven Wilkinson (1).jpg

    Misty Copeland and Raven Wilkinson, both groundbreaking ballerinas, together at curtain call. 

  • Lorraine Graves and Keith Saunders in Arthur Mitchell’s ballet, Holberg Suite (2).jpg

    Dancers Lorraine Graves and Keith Saunders in Arthur Mitchell’s ballet, “Holberg Suite”.

  • The Dance Theatre of Harlem in Arthur Mitchell’s Rhythmetron (1).jpg

    The Dance Theatre of Harlem in Arthur Mitchell’s “Rhythmetron”.

These dancers were inspired to move for all sorts of reasons: to challenge their bodies and  expand their limitations, to confront social issues and to engage their communities. Regardless of the reason, their journeys are a part of our country’s history and culture, and they should not be forgotten.

For Black History Month, Google Arts & Culture is putting a spotlight on the history of black dance and creating a place where everyone has the opportunity to see it. Working with 13 of the top dance institutions, including American Ballet Theatre and Dance Theatre of Harlem, this collection shows the role that iconic black dancers, choreographers and dance companies played.

Put together in one place, this gives an inspiring look of human achievement throughout history. It's my hope that this collection will inspire people to move for whatever reason, no matter where they are.

Explore art and culture through a new lens

We believe the intersection of art and technology can give everyone the opportunity to interact with culture in new ways. Over the past seven years, we’ve worked with cultural institutions to create experiments and features that help you find your art doppelganger and uncover color connections between images. Together, we created augmented reality features so everybody can dive into a virtual gallery or display life-size artworks, wherever you are.

Today, you can find all of these features in one single place: a new Camera tab in the Google Arts & Culture app. You can think of the Camera tab as your new doorway to an entire world of digitized art.

Ever wondered if a portrait by Frida Kahlo would fit nicely in your bedroom? Art Projector shows you actual-size artworks in augmented reality right in front of you, wherever you are. Use the featured suggestions to place your favorite masterpieces in your kitchen, office or backyard. Or look for the AR icon below tens of thousands of images in the Google Arts & Culture app—there’s lots to see, from majestic landscapes to vibrant butterflies. You can even move right up to each image to examine every stunning detail in super high resolution.

Do you share similarities with the portrait of Emperor Gojong, or a face in one of these portraits? Jump face-first into art with Art Selfie to find artworks that most closely match your facial features. And if you’re intrigued by some of the results, you can simply tap on your lookalike to discover more information about the work or the artist. So far millions of selfies have been taken with Art Selfie, introducing people to artists they may have never heard of before.

  • color palette sushi
  • art selfie
  • frida
  • pocket gallery

Take a snapshot of anything around you and find colorful connections to art using Color Palette. Using computer vision algorithms, Color Palette finds multiple artworks from around the world that exactly match the color in the photo you just snapped of, let’s say, your favorite outfit or the sushi lunch in front of you. By engaging with the environment around you, you can discover new artworks and the colors that connect them.

The new Camera tab will also include Pocket Gallery, a virtual exhibition space and experience that brings together all of Vermeer's known artworks in one place. All 36 of his paintings—including the famous “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and missing masterpiece “The Concert”—hang lifesize and perfectly lit.

With all of these features in one place, inspiration is only one click of your camera away. Find the new Camera tab in the latest version of the Google Arts & Culture app, available on Android and iOS.

Inside Brazil’s National Museum on Google Arts & Culture

On September 2nd 2018, a fire struck the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, one of the largest collections of natural history in the world. An estimated 20 million pieces were lost, including indigenous artifacts, dinosaur remains and the oldest human skeleton ever discovered in the Americas.

Starting back in 2017, Google Arts & Culture had begun working with the museum to bring their collection online—so that anyone, anywhere in the world could see and learn about these ancient artifacts. Now for the first time ever, you can virtually step inside the museum and learn about its lost collection through Street View imagery and online exhibits.

The incredible diversity of artifacts in Brazil’s National Museum reflected centuries of Brazil's culture and natural history, from the Amazon’s endangered butterflies to beautifully-crafted indigenous masks and decorated pottery. Unfortunately, the destruction of collections like these reminds us of the diverse threats that exist to the world’s heritage—and how important it is to protect it. Advances in technology—like high-resolution photography, photogrammetry, 3D laser scanning, and virtual and augmented reality—have not only introduced new forms of art, but help us preserve the world's most precious heritage. Even though images cannot replace what has been lost, they offer us a way to remember.

  • image1

    Luzia is the oldest human skeleton found in the Americas, believed to be 11,500 years old.

  • image2

    Visitors can explore inside the museum via immersive Street View imagery captured before the fire.

  • image3

    The Bendegó Meteorite, one of the largest in the world, was discovered by a boy looking for a lost cow in 1784.

  • image4

    A mummified cat from ancient Egypt, an offering to the cat goddess Bastet.

  • image5

    A Titanosaurus skeleton replica, whose original bones were discovered near Sao Paulo in the 1950s.

  • image6

    A vase from the Marajoara, a Pre-Columbian society located near the mouth of the Amazon.

  • image10

    Indigenous masks from the Awetí, Waurá and Mehináku people.

Learn more about the National Museum of Brazil by exploring the exhibition on Google Arts & Culture and on our iOS and Android apps.