For all the hype around augmented reality, Google’s Tango technology hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. In fact, the second handset to support the tech – the ASUS ZenFone AR — was only announced last week at CES.But there’s certainly a chance for Tango to have life beyond the consumer space. The Detroit Institute of Arts is looking to the tech as a way to engage museum-goers, following in the footsteps of last year’s MWC-tied play by Barcelona’s Museum Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. READ MORE: A Detroit art museum is leveraging Google Tango for an AR history lesson | TechCrunch
Tag Archives: museums
1.8 Million Free Works of Art from World-Class #Museums: A Meta List of Great #Art #Collections Online | Open Culture #culture #digital
Since the first stirrings of the internet, artists and curators have puzzled over what the fluidity of online space would do to the experience of viewing works of art…online galleries have long been “making works of art widely available, introducing new forms of perception in film and photography and allowing art to move from private to public, from the elite to the masses.” The vast collections in the virtual galleries listed await your visit: 1.8 Million Free Works of Art from World-Class Museums: A Meta List of Great Art Available Online | Open Culture
Inside the Hamilton Type Museum, Where You’re the Printer | WIRED #typefaces #typography
THE HAMILTON WOOD Type & Printing Museum is not of our time. But it’s what’s inside the museum that transports you to a time of pounding machines, toxic inks and shellac, sawdust and wood chips, with workers bent over cases of typefaces. The museum covers 80,000 square feet and houses 1.5 million pieces of type, 6,000 wooden printing plates, and 300 vintage wood type fonts, but it is as much about today as yesterday. The Hamilton is a working museum, where first-time visitors and longtime patrons alike can get their hands dirty. READ MORE: Inside the Hamilton Type Museum, Where You’re the Printer | WIRED
Bizarre, beautiful insect images made from 8,000 photos | CNET
What’s bugging you? A British photographer painstakingly photographs every section of a specimen’s body separately, then combines them for one amazing image. SEE MORE at: http://microsculpture.net
READ MORE: Bizarre, beautiful insect images made from 8,000 photos | CNET
Recent #Terrorism, #Disaster and #Transparency Events Related to #Publishing, #Libraries, #Archives and #Museums
A worrying trend. A way for ordinary citizens to challenge ignorance, censorship, intellectual freedom and freedom of speech is simply to stay informed and be aware of recent events:
- Satellite images confirm major temple destroyed in Syria’s Palmyra: U.N | Reuters Canada
- Why it’s all right to be more horrified by the razing of Palmyra than mass murder | The Guardian
- Beheaded Syrian scholar refused to lead Isis to hidden Palmyra antiquities | The Guardian
- Terrifying Archives | Annoyed Librarian | Library Journal
- British Library turns down Taliban archive because of UK terror laws | The Telegraph
- Twitter Is Shutting Down Even More Government Transparency Accounts | Gizmodo
- When will Russia stop trying to re-write history? | The Telegraph
- Russian publisher prints books about Putin under names of western authors | The Guardian
- Harper Government Trashes Another Federal Science Library |
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada | MarketWired - The Race To Digitize Iraqi History Before ISIS Can Get To It | Gizmodo
- Facing Islamic State threat, Iraq digitizes national library | Associated Press
- UNESCO mobilizes the international community to end cultural cleansing in Iraq | UNESCO.org
- Destruction of Antiquities by ISIS Militants Is Denounced | New York Times
- What the Islamic State’s Destruction of Antiquities Means to Archaeologists | New Republic
- Iraq, the Ultimate War Crime: Erasing the History of Mesopotamia. The Destruction of Nineveh | Global Research
- Lost libraries and broken Buddhas: war, iconoclasm and social media | The Art Newspaper
- A Moscow library containing rare UN documents, ancient Slavic texts, and 14 million books is on fire | Quartz
From 2014
- UNESCO alarmed by news of mass destruction of books in Mosul | UNESCO.org
- National Museum Of Iraq Reopens As ISIS Threat Casts Dark Shadow | Co.Design
- Search Russia Bans Cursing in Movies, Books, Music and Media | Mashable
- Bosnia-Herzegovina fire feared to have destroyed Ottoman archives | The Guardian
- Museums And Heritage Sites In Syria Are Under Siege | Co.Design
- How the Harper Government Committed a Knowledge Massacre | Huffington Post
- Secret Memo Casts Doubt on Feds’ Claims for Science Library Closures | The Tyee
- Thousands of books, manuscripts torched in fire at historic Lebanese library (PHOTOS) | RT
Smithsonian’s @Kickstarter to Show Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit Blasts Past Goal | Mashable #libraries #museums
May inspire other museums, libraries and archives to launch Kickstarter campaigns!
When the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum launched Reboot the Suit, a Kickstarter campaign to preserve and display Neil Armstrong’s iconic Apollo 11 spacesuit, they set a goal of $500,000. With two hours left of the campaign, they’ve raised over $715,000 from more than 9,400 backers. READ MORE: Smithsonian’s Kickstarter to show Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit blasts past goal | Mashable.
British Library Asks for Help Deciphering Medieval Sword | CNET #libraries #museums #language
Image Credit: The British Library
A sword on display at the British Library has an 800-year-old mystery engraved on its blade. Dating back to between 1250 and 1330 AD, the sword was discovered in the east of England, in the River Witham near Lincoln, in the 19th century. The sword is a particularly fine double-edged steel weapon of English design. It was most likely forged in Germany and belonged to a wealthy man or a knight.
The hilt is cross-shaped, which is normal for swords from this period of the Middle Ages, and is heavy enough to have cloven a man’s head in twain if swung with sufficient strength.
But the sword, on loan to the library from the British Museum, does have a couple of highly unusual features. Down the centre of the blade, it has two grooves known as fullers, where most blades only have one. On one side, it also bears an inscription:
+NDXOXCHWDRGHDXORVI+
It’s not the presence of the inscription that has researchers nonplussed, but its content: Experts don’t know what the inscription means. READ MORE: British Library asks for help deciphering a medieval sword | CNET.
Biodiversity Heritage Library Launches #Crowdsourcing #Games | Library Journal #libraries #search #gamification #volunteer
The Purposeful Gaming and BHL project recently launched its first two browser-based video games, Smorball and Beanstalk. Both are designed to offer players a fun online diversion while helping the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) enable full-text searching of digitized materials. Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which was awarded in December 2013, the project is exploring how games might be used to entice people to participate in crowdsourcing efforts at libraries and museums. READ MORE: Biodiversity Heritage Library Launches Crowdsourcing Games | Library Journal
The Key to #Digital #Learning? Bring It Into the Real World | WIRED #kids #education #museums #interactive
IF YOU WANT to teach your kid about ecology, sustainability, or the future of interactive education, take them to the New York Hall of Science and head for the giant virtual waterfall.
The massive digital faucet feeds the ecosystems of Connected Worlds, a cutting-edge installation that aims to teach youngsters about environmental science by immersing them in it. It’s an interactive simulation big enough to walk around inside—virtual reality that’s not piped into a headset but projected onto a real physical space.
Kids can shape the environment through a clever combination of physical and digital interaction. READ MORE: The Key to Digital Learning? Bring It Into the Real World | WIRED.
Student Finds Old Parchment In University Library, Turns Out It’s Probably The World’s Oldest Quran | HuffPost #Quran #libraries #artifacts #religion
http://embed.live.huffingtonpost.com/HPLEmbedPlayer/?segmentId=55aff7fd02a76081990002ef&autoPlay=false
A Ph.D. student who stumbled upon several ancient pieces of paper hidden in another book may have inadvertently discovered pages from the world’s oldest Quran, researchers at the University of Birmingham in England announced Wednesday.
Radiocarbon dating estimates the pages, likely made of sheep or goat skin, are 1,370 years old, the BBC reports. The testing is more than 95 percent accurate, meaning the parchment is probably from the era of Prophet Muhammad, who is thought to have lived between the years 570 and 632. READ MORE: Student Finds Old Parchment In University Library, Turns Out It’s Probably The World’s Oldest Quran | Huffington Post.
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