Culture & Religion — February 2, 2011

Is Google the Future of Art?

The Google Art Project offers a new form of collaboration that allows museums to take extraordinary art works beyond their individual homes to create the first global art collection.

bigthinkeditor

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Whether you’re in an internet café in São Paolo looking at the brushwork in Vincent van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night, which is normally found on display at MoMA in New York, or at home in Cleveland, exploring the surface of the British National Gallery’s Holbein painting The Ambassadors, you’ll find a different level of detail in viewing art online with this project, and new, virtual ways of exploring gallery spaces that dramatically change the experience of learning about great works of art.

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Guest Thinkers

From Your Bedroom: The Promise of Google Art Project

One of the true joys of the internet is that you can do pretty much anything (even blog) from the comfort of your own bedroom (maybe even in your pajamas). […]

A statue of a thoughtful, seated philosopher on the right seems to be contemplating a calling, while a standing figure holding a lyre on the left adds harmony against the textured background.

Thinking

Everyday Philosophy: Can you have a “calling” without a caller?

If you’re an atheist with a vocation, who laid that path for you?

Close-up image of a human iris featuring vibrant blue and yellow hues with a dark pupil in the center.

The mystery at the heart of consciousness

“Is it possible that consciousness is a much more basic phenomenon in nature and is essentially pervading everything?”

▸

10 min

—

with

Annaka Harris

Starts With A Bang

Ask Ethan: Does the CMB really “prove” the Big Bang?

Since the mid-1960s, the CMB has been identified with the Big Bang’s leftover glow. Could any alternative explanations still work?

A wasp illustration in blue on grid paper is overlaid on a close-up image of effervescent bubbles in a golden alcoholic liquid.

Health

The first known animal that’s “immune” to alcohol intoxication

Could studying the Oriental hornet lead to a treatment for people with alcohol use disorder?

Up Next

Surprising Science

Emulating Nature in the Lab

Nature is smart, efficient and innovative. That’s why scientists and engineers all over the world try to copy it in their labs. The field concerned with imitating nature is called biomimetics.