3D Virtual Galleries via Google

Google just revealed its 3D Virtual Galleries showcasing most lauded museums in the world and their amazing collections.

The exulted list is expanding fast and it so far has included NYMOMA, MET, Uffizi in Florence, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam,etc.  Visitors can navigate the 3D museum space and see how the art collections are displayed in their homes, or view individual paintings in amazing details.  A mobile app can give museum visitors a real-time guide as well.


New York Museum of Modern Art


The Birth of Venus - Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

I suppose that this will be a new way to present two-dimensional artworks.  Incidentally, I just accepted an invitation from 3D Virtual Art Space online gallery to showcase my works.  It was only last week that I blogged about my first 3D gallery.  I've created four of such galleries and three new additions, beside the first Portrait Gallery, are below:


3DVas Gallery - Birds and Fish


3DVas Gallery - Landscape


3DVas Gallery - Still Life

Unfortunately, 3D Virtual Art Space requires users to download a small software if not pre-installed and many are hesitating. I hope that the operation systems of computers will have an update to fix this soon.  The host ascerted that the software is absolutely safe and gave me two well known websites using this technology: NASA and Unity Fast Facts.


3DVas Gallery - Birds and Fish


3DVas Gallery - Landscape


3DVas Gallery - Still Life
(use arrow keys to navigate) For details, please read Figure and Self-Portrait Galleries on 3D Virtual Art Space (3Dvas)

Label: 3D Virtual Art Space

Location, Location - Floatingsheep's Take on Geographies of Wikipedia in China

Floatingsheep.org, a fascinating website dedicated to mapping and analyzing user generated Google Map placemarks, so as to provide one glimpse of what internet users (in the aggregate) think about particular places, posted a fascinating article on the Geographies of Wikipedia in China.

According to the Floatingsheep, the geotagged articles in Chinese are concentrated on the more developed regions, particularly southeast part of China:



However, counting articles in all languages, the patten shifts and the emphasis is on the western region, particularly Tibet and Xianjiang:



The article argues, "It has been demonstrated that there appears to be a correlation between the locations of contributors and the topics that they write about. The fact that most Chinese Wikipedians are from eastern provinces would then seem to explain some of the differences between the geographies of Chinese Wikipedia and all other Wikipedias."

However, when I was in China in March 2010, I found that in China Wikipedia was blocked (homepage was not, but search results were).

Floatingsheep plan to revisit this topic at regular intervals in order to map any possible spatial shifts over time. I definitely will stay tuned.

Google, Wikipedia, Flickr, Oasis and Bob Dylan

What do Google, Wikipedia, Flickr, British rock band Oasis and American icon Bob Dylan have in common?

Not welcomed in China, at least partially.

According to a report by StarPulse, Bob Dylan has canceled his planned Asian tour this month after he was reportedly refused permission to play in Shanghai and Beijing. His tour should have included stops at Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

According to the report, "Jeffrey Wu, of Taiwan-based promotion company Brokers Brothers Herald, says, 'China's Ministry of Culture did not give us permission to stage concerts in Beijing and Shanghai, so we had no alternative but to scrap plans for a Southeast Asian tour. The chance to play in China was the main attraction for him. When that fell through everything else was called off. What Björk did definitely made life very difficult for other performers. They are very wary of what will be said by performers on stage now.'"

Björk made an onstage protest about the Chinese occupation of Tibet at a concert in 2008.

More Social Media Unavailable

My 28 March 2010 blog entry "What One Cannot See on Flickr in China", I mentioned that I was frustrated by the fact that many of my Flickr images of my paintings and drawings were unavailable to view in China, so I couldn't show my relatives and friends of my endeavors.

While there, I discovered furthermore that many social media were to some degree unavailable. The most challenging one for me personally was the inaccessibility to Facebook. I felt truly isolated then. Below are the screenshots of those unavailable sites:

Facebook - (This link seems broken)

Blogger (Blogging tool based on Google technology) - (Web page cannot be displayed)

My blogs on Blogger - (Web page cannot be displayed)

Wikipedia search results - (Web page cannot be displayed)