Take a Virtual Tour of Abbey Road Studios, Courtesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

in Google, Music | April 16th, 2015

Once again, Google qui­et­ly drops a nifty piece of inter­ac­tive web­bery and acts like it ain’t no big deal.

Google’s new web site, Inside Abbey Road, lets view­ers walk inside Abbey Road Stu­dios, check out the famous record­ing stu­dio (home to most of the Bea­t­les’ songs, birth­place of Dark Side of the Moon, Radiohead’s The Bends, Kanye West­’s Late Reg­is­tra­tion, the list goes on) inspect the rooms, and watch inter­views and mini-docs. It also match­es up icon­ic pho­tos (includ­ing the one shot out­side of the famous cross­walk) with the stu­dio today. The site is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google and the stu­dio to cel­e­brate over 80 years of music his­to­ry.

Inside Abbey Road

Abbey Road exist­ed before the Fab Four and Cliff Richard, of course, and the new site includes footage of com­pos­er Sir Edward Elgar open­ing the stu­dio in 1931 and con­duct­ing a record­ing of “Land of Hope and Glo­ry.”

There’s plen­ty of mod­ern footage too, from Kylie Minogue and Rob­bie Williams to Take That and Sig­ur Rós. You have to poke around a lit­tle bit to find every­thing, but the site includes a map in case you get lost.

abbey road beatles

You can also have a go at mix­ing a four-track record­ing in the con­trol booth, fool around on the J37 tape deck that was the height of tech dur­ing the time of Sgt. Pep­per, and try to find the rumored echo cham­ber. (Trust me, it’s there.)

abbey road board

If you want to take a break out­side and watch a real-time ver­sion of this dig­i­tal loca­tion, there’s always the Abbey Road traf­fic cam, where you watch a whole bunch of tourists try to get their Bea­t­les on with­out get­ting hit by an irate lor­ry dri­ver.

Take your vir­tu­al tour of Abbey Road here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCartney’s Con­cep­tu­al Draw­ings For the Abbey Road Cov­er and Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour Film

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

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Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

in Art, Google, Museums, Travel | March 22nd, 2015

circling

Cir­cling Birdies by Cheko, Grana­da Spain

Since last we wrote, Google Street Art has dou­bled its online archive by adding some 5,000 images, bring­ing the tal­ly to 10,000, with coor­di­nates pin­point­ing exact loca­tions on all five con­ti­nents (though as of this writ­ing, things are a bit thin on the ground in Africa). Giv­en the tem­po­ral real­i­ties of out­door, guer­ril­la art, pil­grims may arrive to find a blank can­vas where graf­fi­ti once flour­ished. (RIP New York City’s 5 Pointz, the “Insti­tute of High­er Burn­ing.”)

A major aim of the project is vir­tu­al preser­va­tion. As with per­for­mance art, doc­u­men­ta­tion is key. Not all of the work can be attrib­uted, but click on an image to see what is known. Guid­ed tours to neigh­bor­hoods rich with street art allow arm­chair trav­el­ers to expe­ri­ence the work, and inter­views with the artists dis­pel any num­ber of stereo­types.

Cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions like Turkey’s Pera Muse­um and Hong Kong’s Art Research Insti­tute, and street art projects based in such hubs as Rome, Paris, Syd­ney, and Bangkok, have pulled togeth­er offi­cial col­lec­tions of pho­tos and videos, but you can play cura­tor too.

It’s easy to add images to a col­lec­tion of your own mak­ing that can be shared with the pub­lic at large or saved for pri­vate inspi­ra­tion. Care­ful, you could lose hours…it’s like Pin­ter­est for peo­ple who grav­i­tate toward spray paint and rub­bish strewn vacant lots over ging­ham wrapped Mason jars.

It’s been a long and bru­tal win­ter here on the east coast, so for my first for­ay, I prowled for Signs of Spring. One of my first hits was “Cir­cling Birdies” by Cheko, above. Locat­ed in Grana­da, Spain, it’s one of the exist­ing works Google has turned into a GIF with some light, log­i­cal ani­ma­tion.

Behold a bit of what typ­ing “flower,” “baby ani­mals,” “plants,” and “trees” into a search box can yield! You can enter Google Street Art here.

Child With Windmill

Artist: Wal­ter Ker­shaw
Lon­don UK

Thrashbird

Artists: Thrash­bird and Renee Gagnon
Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia.

Baby Chick

Artist: unknown
Rochester, NY

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 11.07.58 PM

Icy and Sot
Rochester NY

Freedom Fighter

Artist: Kristy San­doval
Los Ange­les, CA

Natureza Viva

Artists: Regg and Violant
Alfragide Por­tu­gal

Beetle

Artist: Klit
Alfragide, Por­tu­gal
A giant col­or­ful bee­tle tries to fly between the ceil­ing and the floor of this park­ing lot. His wings seem filled with flower petals. So, the “Liv­ing Nature” project brought a set of huge insects that car­ry a note of liv­ing spir­it to the space.

Deep Blue

Artist: Rai Cruz
Mani­la, Philip­pines

Nagel
Artist: Chris­ti­aan Nagel
Lon­don, Eng­land

Untitled Rome
Artist: Lady Aiko
Rome, Italy

Parsa

Artist: Andrew Ken­tish
Nepal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour the World’s Street Art with Google Street Art

Obey the Giant: Short Film Presents the True Sto­ry of Shep­ard Fairey’s First Act of Street Art

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Google Makes Available 750 Icons for Designers & Developers: All Open Source 

in Google, Web/Tech | October 21st, 2014

google icons

If you’re a design­er or devel­op­er, Kottke.org thought you’d might like to know: “As part of their Mate­r­i­al Design visu­al lan­guage, Google has open-sourced a pack­age of 750 icons. More info here.”

Over at Github, you can view a live pre­view of the icons or down­load the icon pack now.

Our friends at Boing­Bo­ing add, “They’re licensed CC-BY-SA and designed for use in mobile apps and oth­er inter­ac­tive stuff.” Use them well.

 

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Tour the World’s Street Art with Google Street Art

in Art, Google, Travel | July 14th, 2014

By far the most enjoy­able part of our recent fam­i­ly trip to Lon­don was the after­noon my young son and I spent in Shored­itch, grop­ing our way to No Brow, a comics shop I had noticed on an ear­ly morn­ing stroll with our host­ess. Our route was evi­dence that I had for­got­ten the coor­di­nates, the street name, the name of the shop… Even­tu­al­ly, I real­ized we were lost, and that is where the real fun began, as we retraced our steps using street art as bread crumbs.

Ah right, there’s  that rooftop mush­room instal­la­tion!

And there’s that Stik fig­ure…

After a while, a FedEx man took pity on us, ruin­ing our fun by steer­ing us toward the prop­er address..

I’m not sure I could ever dupli­cate our trail, but I enjoy try­ing with Google Street Art. Arm­chair trav­el­ers can use it to project them­selves to the heart of ephemer­al, pos­si­bly ille­gal exhi­bi­tions all over the globe,.

Bogotá... Paris... New York’s leg­endary 5 Pointz, before the land­lord clutched and white­washed the entire thing in the dead of night. Each up close pho­to bears a high­ly infor­ma­tion­al cap­tion, much more than you’d find in the street itself. Think of it as an after-the-fact dig­i­tal muse­um. It’s appro­pri­ate, giv­en the ephemer­al nature of the work. An online pres­ence is its best shot at preser­va­tion.

Those of us with some­thing to con­tribute can add to the record with a user gallery or by tag­ging our pho­tos with #Stree­tArtist.

Enter Google Street Art here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Obey the Giant: Short Film Presents the True Sto­ry of Shep­ard Fairey’s First Act of Street Art

Banksy Cre­ates a Tiny Repli­ca of The Great Sphinx Of Giza In Queens

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How British Codebreakers Built the First Electronic Computer

in Google, History, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | April 23rd, 2014

It was only a mat­ter of time before the folks at Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute wan­dered down the road in Moun­tain View to vis­it the Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um. Togeth­er they’ve tak­en on a slim lit­tle sub­ject, Rev­o­lu­tion: The First 2000 Years of Com­put­ing

Unlike the best Cul­tur­al Insti­tute exhibits (the fall of the Iron Cur­tain and the daz­zling array of oth­er art and his­to­ry col­lec­tions come to mind) this one doesn’t do enough to lever­age video to bring the mate­r­i­al to life. It’s a breezy lit­tle tour from the hum­ble (but effec­tive) aba­cus to punched cards, mag­net­ic discs and the dawn of minia­tur­iza­tion and net­work­ing.

But noth­ing about how the Inter­net devel­oped, lead­ing to the Web and, now, the Inter­net of Every­thing?

I’ll admit that I learned a few things. I hadn’t heard of the design-for­ward Cray 1 super­com­put­er with its round tow­er (to min­i­mize wire lengths) and bench to dis­crete­ly hide pow­er sup­plies. The Xerox Alto came with con­sumer friend­ly fea­tures includ­ing a mouse, email and the capac­i­ty to print exact­ly what was on the screen. The unfor­tu­nate acronym for this asset wasWYSI­WYG (What You See Is What You Get).

I had also nev­er heard about the Utah teapot, a pic­ture of a gleam­ing white ceram­ic urn used for 20 years as the bench­mark for real­is­tic light, shade and col­or in com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed images.

“>http://youtu.be/amRQ-xfCuR4

More inter­est­ing, and up to the Cul­tur­al Institute’s stan­dards, is the exhib­it built in part­ner­ship with the Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing in Buck­ing­hamshire, Eng­land. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of his­to­ry, focus­ing on Hitler’s efforts to encrypt mes­sages dur­ing the war and stump the Allied forces. He com­mis­sioned con­struc­tion of a super-sophis­ti­cat­ed machine (not Enig­ma, if you’re think­ing of that). The machine was called Lorenz and it took encryp­tion to an entire­ly new lev­el.

“>http://youtu.be/knXWMjIA59c

British lin­guists and oth­ers labored to man­u­al­ly deci­pher the mes­sages. Attempts to speed the process led to devel­op­ment of Colos­sus, the world’s first elec­tron­ic comuter. The project was kept secret by the British gov­ern­ment until 1975.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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New Google-Powered Site Tracks Global Deforestation in ‘Near-Real-Time’

in Current Affairs, Environment, Google, Maps | March 5th, 2014

In Sep­tem­ber we told you about tril­lions of satel­lite images of Earth, gen­er­at­ed by the Land­sat, that are now avail­able to the pub­lic.

Now we can share an inter­ac­tive tool that is using some of those Land­sat images to stop ille­gal defor­esta­tion.

With help from Google Earth Engine, the World Resources Insti­tute launched Glob­al For­est Watch, an online for­est mon­i­tor­ing and alert sys­tem that allows indi­vid­ual com­put­er users to watch forests around the world change in an almost real-time stream of imagery.

Whis­tle blow­ers are mak­ing pow­er­ful use of the Glob­al For­est Watch tool. Using spa­tial data streams avail­able on the site to observe for­est changes in south­east­ern Peru, a num­ber of users sub­mit­ted alerts about rapid­ly esca­lat­ing defor­esta­tion near a gold mine and riv­er val­ley. In anoth­er case, observers sub­mit­ted an alert about ille­gal log­ging in the Repub­lic of the Con­go.

Five years ago, NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey lift­ed pro­to­cols that kept Land­sat images pro­pri­etary. Now, agen­cies like the World Resources Institute—and even tiny cit­i­zen watch­dog groups around the world—have access to incred­i­bly rich tools and data. Some of the imagery is hard to inter­pret. Glob­al For­est Watch devel­oped a num­ber of dif­fer­ent data lay­ers for users to apply, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor for­est areas for trends or ille­gal log­ging. The video at the top of this page gives a good overview of how the site works. This one gives more detail about how to use the maps on the Glob­al For­est Watch site.

Select an area of the world and then select a data set that inter­ests you. Choose to look at ter­rain, satel­lite, road, tree height, or com­pos­ite images of a par­tic­u­lar region. Data lay­ers can be lay­ered on top of one anoth­er to show trends in for­est man­age­ment. In Indone­sia, for exam­ple, you can use the FORMA alerts but­ton to see what has already been report­ed in that area of the humid trop­ics.

How can you tell if for­est change is due to ille­gal log­ging? Turn on the For­est Use fil­ters to see which areas are autho­rized for log­ging and min­ing and which are pro­tect­ed. In Indone­sia, many areas are des­ig­nat­ed for oil palm pro­duc­tion, but expan­sion of those crops are often asso­ci­at­ed with loss of nat­ur­al for­est.

Do your own sleuthing. The site is designed to har­ness data from gov­ern­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic sci­en­tists, along with obser­va­tion from indi­vid­u­als (us). There is even infor­ma­tion about com­pa­nies that are grow­ing oil palm trees, so it’s pos­si­ble that a dili­gent user could catch an over-aggres­sive grow­er step­ping over the for­est bound­ary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

Trace Darwin’s Foot­steps with Google’s New Vir­tu­al Tour of the Gala­pa­gos Islands

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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Google’s Music Timeline: A Visualization of 60 Years of Changing Musical Tastes

in Google, Music | January 21st, 2014

google music timeline

The state of music has changed rad­i­cal­ly in recent years. Of course, the largest change that springs to mind is Nap­ster, the pro­gram that made col­lec­tive musi­cal shar­ing pos­si­ble and trig­gered the inex­orable decline in record sales in the ear­ly 2000s. Busi­ness mod­el aside, how­ev­er, the music indus­try has also weath­ered tremen­dous­ly volatile changes in taste over the past half-cen­tu­ry.

To see just how dra­mat­ic the changes in musi­cal fash­ion have been, check out Google’s new Music Time­line, pic­tured above. This sim­ple, col­or-cod­ed chart dis­plays the pop­u­lar­i­ty of var­i­ous gen­res from 1950 onwards (pre-50s sales data is just too spot­ty and incon­sis­tent). While jazz record sales held the lion’s share of the mar­ket through­out much of the 1950’s, the advent of rock and pop acts such as the Bea­t­les in the 1960s rel­e­gat­ed jazz to the minor leagues.

metallica timeline

The time­line also allows you to look at the pop­u­lar­i­ty of var­i­ous bands through­out the course of their careers. Metal­li­ca, the liti­gious crit­ics of Napster’s file-shar­ing ways, are an inter­est­ing exam­ple of the wax­ing and wan­ing of a par­tic­u­lar band’s suc­cess. Ini­tial spike of pop­u­lar­i­ty aside, as is clear from the image right above, the band had been rel­a­tive­ly suc­cess­ful with each of their stu­dio albums. After the release of their cov­er album in 1998, enti­tled Garage Inc., things quick­ly head­ed south. Whether it’s because of the Nap­ster deba­cle of 2000, when the band’s law­suit effec­tive­ly shut down the com­pa­ny, or a regret­table change of direc­tion, many for­mer fans sim­ply weren’t inter­est­ed any­more.

Before fans come to the defense of whichev­er bands were slight­ed by Google’s visu­al­iza­tion, a few caveats: the data used to judge rel­a­tive suc­cess is derived from Google Play user libraries. The more users have an album, the more suc­cess­ful it’s deemed by the algo­rithm. Addi­tion­al­ly, if you’re a clas­si­cal music fan, you’re out of luck. For var­i­ous logis­ti­cal rea­sons, Google decid­ed against its inclu­sion in the time­line.

For more infor­ma­tion about Google’s Music Time­line, click here. For a Michael Hann’s first look review over at The Guardian’s music blog, which dis­cuss­es the pos­si­ble skews in the data, head this way.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Music Told in Sev­en Rapid­ly Illus­trat­ed Min­utes

100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

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Google Puts Over 57,000 Works of Art on the Web

in Art, Google, Museums | December 31st, 2013

dali google art project

In its art preser­va­tion­ist wing, the Cul­tur­al Insti­tute, Google hous­es an enor­mous dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of art­work span­ning cen­turies and con­ti­nents in what it calls the Art Project. Google’s col­lec­tion, writes Drue Katao­ka at Wired, is part of a “big deal […] it sig­nals a broad­er, emerg­ing ‘open con­tent’ art move­ment.” “Besides the Get­ty,” Katao­ka notes, this move­ment to dig­i­tize fine art col­lec­tions includes efforts by “Los Ange­les’ LACMA… as well as D.C.’s Nation­al Gallery of Art, the Dal­las Muse­um of Art, Baltimore’s Wal­ters Art Muse­um, and the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Art Gallery. And Google. Yes, Google.” Google is work­ing hard to defuse this “yes, Google” reac­tion, post­ing fre­quent updates to its col­lec­tion, already a mag­nif­i­cent phe­nom­e­non: “Imag­ine see­ing an image of the Fall of the Rebel Angels by Pieter Breuegel the Elder,” writes Katao­ka, “or Vin­cent van Gogh’s Iris­es, in high res­o­lu­tion.” Now, you can, thanks to Google’s aston­ish­ing­ly vast dig­i­tal archive.

In the Art Project, you can stroll on over to Por­tu­gal’s Museu do Cara­mu­lo, for exam­ple, which Google describes as “an unusu­al muse­um in a small town” off the beat­en path. There, you can see this macabre 1947 Picas­so still life or this 1954 Sal­vador Dali por­trait of a Roman horse­man in Iberia (above). Then head over to the oth­er side of the world, where the Adachi Muse­um of Art in Japan con­tains 165,000 square meters of Japan­ese gar­den: “The Dry Land­scape Gar­den, The White Grav­el and Pine Gar­den, the Moss Gar­den, and The Pond Gar­den.” It also fea­tures gor­geous paint­ings like Yokoya­ma Taikan’s 1931 Autumn Leaves and Hishi­da Shun­so’s adorable 1906 Cat and Plum Blos­soms. Dozens of small­er col­lec­tions like these sit com­fort­ably along­side such exten­sive and well-known col­lec­tions as New York’s MoMA and Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and Flo­rence’s Uffizi. See a tiny sam­pler of the Art Project in the video teas­er above.

BrazilTrompe

Google’s col­lec­tion has great­ly expand­ed since its com­par­a­tive­ly mod­est 2011 roll-out. The com­pa­ny signed part­ner­ship agree­ments with 151 insti­tu­tions in 2012 and the Art Project has grown since then to include over 57,000 dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tions of famous and not-so-famous works of art. Most recent­ly, it has added work to the online col­lec­tions of 34 dif­fer­ent part­ner insti­tu­tions. Google’s announce­ment on its offi­cial blog takes a themed approach, pre­sent­ing ver­sions of sev­er­al trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) works that have just joined the Art Project. Trompe l’oeil is a gim­mick as old as antiq­ui­ty, and Google gives us sev­er­al exam­ples, begin­ning with the styl­ish, under­stat­ed Brazil­ian train sta­tion mur­al right above by Adri­ana Vare­jao. Below, see the ceil­ing of Italy’s Nation­al Archae­o­log­i­cal Muse­um of Fer­rara, a much more clas­si­cal (or Baroque) approach to trompe l’oeil that dis­plays some typ­i­cal ele­ments of the peri­od, includ­ing elab­o­rate geo­met­ric designs, lots of gold, and well-dressed fig­ures star­ing down at view­ers or float­ing off into the heav­ens. See more trompe l’oeil works on Google’s blog, and access their full dig­i­tal col­lec­tion here.

FerraraTrompe

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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