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Our brains just love the tactile. Knowing you are feet from the threads and paint of a master. That you can connect with this long dead artist so closely, in 3

Our brains just love the tactile. Knowing you are feet from the threads and paint of a master. That you can connect with this long dead artist so closely, in 3 dimensions. It’s very human.

skhr0680 5y ago
Oil paintings look quite different depending on the angle you view them from too, that's something that I don't think can be recreated without some kind of VR / head tracking
- bsenftner 5y ago
  I did early interactive multimedia art history documentaries, with voyages into paintings through voiced over descriptions and closeup montages. It was captivating work, each documentary being 7 hours of material, in 8 languages. Because Philips and Sony were trying to prove CD-ROMs to the consumer back then, 42 years ago, they spent money. We got access to museum archives, worked on some of the first digital scans of a good number of well known pieces, and had celebrities reading the voiced over narratives. We had these weird Sony News Unix workstations with newspaper layout monitors - huge grey scale displays, spoiled me until 4K monitors finally arrived. That was '89-'94, the end of the dawn of all this digital media we take for granted today.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    That must have been quite a fun ride! It really boggles my mind how you can get such cheap light high quality monitors now. And now we just waste them displaying these ugly orange web pages and Skittles colored TypeScript code. I remember hearing about the Sony News Unix workstation, and being dismayed that it didn't run Sun's NeWS window system. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS
  - duckmysick 5y ago
    Sounds really interesting. Is this still available somewhere?
    - bsenftner 5y ago
      The platform no longer exists, it was "CD-I", a pre-internet hybrid CD-ROM format with extensions for real time streaming. Intimate experience with that early real time streaming got me on the original Sony PlayStation OS team in Tokyo.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Very true! See my previous comment on Paul Debevec's Light Stage and Rouen Revisited, and check out some of the vidoes of Paul Debevec talking about and demonstrating it -- he's great at explaining and showing how it works, and it's useful in many different ways, including AR/VR, video games, movie production, art appreciation, online museums, historical preservation, 3D portraits (they captured Obama!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30069100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30069100 Scanning and Printing a 3D Portrait of President Barack Obama: https://vgl.ict.usc.edu/Research/PresidentialPortrait/ https://vgl.ict.usc.edu/Research/PresidentialPortrait/
labster 5y ago
I’m a religious person, but we don’t need this religious mumbo-jumbo to explain why oil paintings are better in person. They just provide more experience in person. A photo gives you one angle and flattens the depth. The real object is designed to be viewed from lots of angles. It looks different from close up, as it does from far away. It interacts with the ambient light. If you walk a couple buildings over from the Night Watch, you get a whole museum dedicated to me droog, Vincent van. And Van Goghs are so highly textured with impasto that they are far more radiant, more life-like, in person. That said the quality of museum experience is important. If you get rushed through the queue to see the Mona Lisa for fifteen seconds (and it’s pretty small), you’ll probably enjoy a print more.
- acomjean 5y ago
  The Getty museum in California uses natural light in their galleries which was pretty special. Your right about the mono Lisa. When I went 1 year before the pandemic you couldn’t get close. and it was the only painting in its own room. Luckily that museum has no shortages of good paintings. There are a couple of VanGoghs at the Rodin museum in France which are pretty amazing and not to busy.
  - labster 5y ago
    The Getty is a great museum except for the art. Not that it’s bad, it’s just that the collection is not the great artists at their best. If you want a better art experience, head over to the Norton Simon in Pasadena. Simon was an art collector who was rich, while J. Paul Getty was a rich person who collected art, and the difference really shows in the collection quality. Both Getty museums are really good architecturally, and worth a visit. Good tip on the Louvre, though. The best art is not the most famous, but whatever emotionally connects to you. And most museums have plenty of pieces that can do so.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  It isn‘t “religious mumbo jumbo”. I didn’t even mention religion. Information encoded using multiple senses will form different and more lasting memories for most humans. I think you managed to agree with what I wrote and dismiss it at the same time.

Our brains just love the tactile. Knowing you are feet from the threads and paint of a master. That you can connect with this long dead artist so closely, in 3 dimensions. It’s very human.

skhr0680 5y ago

Oil paintings look quite different depending on the angle you view them from too, that's something that I don't think can be recreated without some kind of VR / head tracking

bsenftner 5y ago
I did early interactive multimedia art history documentaries, with voyages into paintings through voiced over descriptions and closeup montages. It was captivating work, each documentary being 7 hours of material, in 8 languages. Because Philips and Sony were trying to prove CD-ROMs to the consumer back then, 42 years ago, they spent money. We got access to museum archives, worked on some of the first digital scans of a good number of well known pieces, and had celebrities reading the voiced over narratives. We had these weird Sony News Unix workstations with newspaper layout monitors - huge grey scale displays, spoiled me until 4K monitors finally arrived. That was '89-'94, the end of the dawn of all this digital media we take for granted today.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  That must have been quite a fun ride! It really boggles my mind how you can get such cheap light high quality monitors now. And now we just waste them displaying these ugly orange web pages and Skittles colored TypeScript code. I remember hearing about the Sony News Unix workstation, and being dismayed that it didn't run Sun's NeWS window system. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_NEWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS
- duckmysick 5y ago
  Sounds really interesting. Is this still available somewhere?
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    The platform no longer exists, it was "CD-I", a pre-internet hybrid CD-ROM format with extensions for real time streaming. Intimate experience with that early real time streaming got me on the original Sony PlayStation OS team in Tokyo.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Very true! See my previous comment on Paul Debevec's Light Stage and Rouen Revisited, and check out some of the vidoes of Paul Debevec talking about and demonstrating it -- he's great at explaining and showing how it works, and it's useful in many different ways, including AR/VR, video games, movie production, art appreciation, online museums, historical preservation, 3D portraits (they captured Obama!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30069100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30069100 Scanning and Printing a 3D Portrait of President Barack Obama: https://vgl.ict.usc.edu/Research/PresidentialPortrait/ https://vgl.ict.usc.edu/Research/PresidentialPortrait/

labster 5y ago

I’m a religious person, but we don’t need this religious mumbo-jumbo to explain why oil paintings are better in person. They just provide more experience in person. A photo gives you one angle and flattens the depth. The real object is designed to be viewed from lots of angles. It looks different from close up, as it does from far away. It interacts with the ambient light. If you walk a couple buildings over from the Night Watch, you get a whole museum dedicated to me droog, Vincent van. And Van Goghs are so highly textured with impasto that they are far more radiant, more life-like, in person. That said the quality of museum experience is important. If you get rushed through the queue to see the Mona Lisa for fifteen seconds (and it’s pretty small), you’ll probably enjoy a print more.

acomjean 5y ago
The Getty museum in California uses natural light in their galleries which was pretty special. Your right about the mono Lisa. When I went 1 year before the pandemic you couldn’t get close. and it was the only painting in its own room. Luckily that museum has no shortages of good paintings. There are a couple of VanGoghs at the Rodin museum in France which are pretty amazing and not to busy.
- labster 5y ago
  The Getty is a great museum except for the art. Not that it’s bad, it’s just that the collection is not the great artists at their best. If you want a better art experience, head over to the Norton Simon in Pasadena. Simon was an art collector who was rich, while J. Paul Getty was a rich person who collected art, and the difference really shows in the collection quality. Both Getty museums are really good architecturally, and worth a visit. Good tip on the Louvre, though. The best art is not the most famous, but whatever emotionally connects to you. And most museums have plenty of pieces that can do so.
bitexploder 5y ago
It isn‘t “religious mumbo jumbo”. I didn’t even mention religion. Information encoded using multiple senses will form different and more lasting memories for most humans. I think you managed to agree with what I wrote and dismiss it at the same time.