Recreate the physical, fine art gallery experience by developing a web based multimedia management system that exploits the natural relationships between interconnected, digital media forms.
There is a substantial need for a personally maintained, open-source, media management system for artists. This thesis will explore the zeitgeist of the online gallery as explained by both traditional museums, galleries and academics, and the digital gallery, as explained by interactive designers, bloggers and scholars. My initial concept was to attempt to recreate the phsycial gallery experience online, by learning how gallery owners and curators structure their exhibitions, and tapping into the decision making process that goes on, and adapting it to the digital realm. This recreation relies on a sophisticated understanding of relational models of data, and a custom software application that takes into consideration the needs of this project: chiefly that it be free, fully customizable, and extentable to unseen applications. The operation of this management system will be targeted towards the working or student artist. This is a perpendicular change to my original concept, where I was mimicking the process of the curator and their needs, whereas this iteration focuses more on the art and the artists, and the framework of the project serves as an intelligent curator.
The commercial gallery’s main focus is to bring bodies into their location and sell them artwork based upon their exhibition’s organization and their marketing and promotion of their artists. Traditional museums raision d’etre is the attraction of visitors to its halls and relative exclusivity of their collection. Neither of these scenarios lend themselves to the support of a recreation of the gallery experience. But the lack of interest from these two groups clearly illuminates the latent threat of a comprehensive online gallery experience, and the disintermediating power of the internet in the hands of an individual artist or movement of artists. Rather than try and force a system on an unwilling client, I will create a comprehensive system for a needing (to succumb to the ‘broke artist’ stereotype) and deserving (in that the desire for the artist is to share their vision with the world) patron.