The recent release of Google Art Project, the web application designed to provide users with high−resolution photos of famous works of art and a street−view−like experience of the world's major art museums, is only the latest in a long line of efforts aimed at digitizing and making public the world's cultural experiences. Although it follows in the footsteps of services like Google Books, providing free and public access to singular works of art sparks an entirely new debate on the societal, legal and scholarly implications of the practice.
For some, virtual art simply doesn't compare to the physical experience.
"Reproductions are okay, but there's nothing like standing in front of the real thing," Meredith Ferguson, an art history graduate student at Tufts, said. "We call it the ‘aura.'"
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Remco Chang agreed that the tangible element of cultural works is lost with services like Google Art Project and Google Books.
"There's something physical about the book. You're absorbing something, learning and you're not even aware of it," Chang said.
Yet physical access to certain scholarly works is not always so easy. Many valuable or ancient works are often restricted to archives, access to which can be extremely limited.
"You have to be somebody to be granted access into these archives," Chang said, hinting at the selective and protective nature of academia against intruders and meddlers.
While such limited access may protect the physical experience, it hinders the ability to create meaningful dialogue among those without an academic fast−pass, stifling an influx of new knowledge and innovation, according to Professor Gregory Crane, chair of the classics department.
"[Open access] gives you the opportunity and motive to work with people you wouldn't have thought of working with," Crane said. "[It provides] opportunities for really sophisticated contributions from non−academics."
Crane is also the editor−in−chief of Tufts' Perseus Project, a digital library that aims to provide online access to "the full record of humanity," including literature, physical artifacts and historic places, according to its website.
Crane said that restricted access to academic libraries, and even to academic journals, limit — to their detriment — the type of material and information that is disseminated.
"If you have a system that only specialists can get into, then you're only going to write for specialists," Crane said.
This exclusivity, Crane feels, defeats the entire purpose of a library.
"Libraries are not a place to provide access to books, but to provide knowledge and information," he said.
Ferguson had the same to say of the overall goal of art museums.
"The mission of all art museums is to educate the public," she said.
In Ferguson's mind, putting entire collections of art on the web and thus enabling people halfway around the world to connect with them would only further the mission of art museums.
"Being able to have that kind of cross−dialogue is amazing," Ferguson said.
Professor of Computer Science Robert Jacob also believes online open access to art to be a prime opportunity for those with only a casual interest in the subject or who may not be willing to travel across the globe to see works in person.
"It's not so much to save people the trouble [of going to the museums], but it's about bringing new people in," Jacob said.
He pointed out that open access tools online can provide a host of new opportunities for the reinterpretation of art, allowing, for example, a user to rearrange Picasso's entire collection in order to view it in chronological order.
"Google Art [Project] seems to give you a tour of the existing; you can do more [online] than you can do in museums," Jacob said.
Google Art Project's ability to enlarge numerous paintings to well within the gigapixel range can allow for an even further level of analysis, according to Chang.
"[By enlarging works], you're changing the intended usage pattern," he said
While the artist's original intention may be lost by doing this, the interactive tools provided by online open access open up a whole new realm of ways to look at art, inviting academics and non−academics to share their contributions, Ferguson argued.
"Using these technologies, the viewer is now the one in control," she said.
There are, of course, legal and financial ramifications to publishing entire libraries online, as evidenced by the ongoing battle between record companies and file−sharing programs, according to Chang.
"The music industry did go through a revolution," he said. "For a very long time, the question was, ‘Is there a business model?'"
Now, though putting their collections online may be a simple matter of publicity for the world's major museums, doing so might injure business on a local level.
"Why do I want to help Google out, while in the meantime I'm hurting myself?" Chang said, referring to what local art museums may be asking themselves. Yet Crane offered the other side of the debate, namely that though a lot of information and works are online, they may still have restricted access and are only available if paid for.
"The primary issue is the restrictions put on things that are digitized. … It's not just what you digitize but how you make it intellectually available," he said.
In a world becoming increasingly smaller due to the access and information provided by the Internet, Jacob believes that these restrictions are only holding back intellectual innovation.
"People are taking an old notion of copyright laws and forcing it on the web, which makes no sense," he said, pointing out that the laws were written for a different time. "I think the law just hasn't caught up yet."
The heart of the issue isn't so much what the legal ramifications are to open access, but rather what the goal is of making all this information available. The aim seems to be education of the masses and allowing the masses to give back some knowledge in return, according to Ferguson, who said that the cross−connections and access provided by the Internet can only jumpstart innovation in a stagnating pool of information.
"It's exciting how scholarship is going to change and what conversations are going to be brought to the table," she said.
Even the in−person benefits that may be lost by viewing a work of art online may not be an issue in the future, Jacob said.
"I don't see why you can't get the exact same experience on a computer," Jacob said. "Interacting with other people might be tricky, but the raw experience you might be able to duplicate."
