Thursday, November 30, 2006

New Galleries: Embedded Objects or URLs


For artists shifting to the new myartspace site later this year, the a "gallery" will have some different features that are important to point out.

First, myartspace will introduce the concept of "portfolios". A portfolio is like a folder on a computer. It contains many images. So a portfolio could be named "France" for photos or paintings done there, or "Egypt" or "flowers". A portfolio is a collection of images and a means of organizing them. A gallery is a collection of one or more portfolios. A portfolio can be used in several galleries.

Second, galleries are "flash objects". The new myartspace site is not solely based on Flash, but the galleries are. Galleries can be integrated into other HTML pages (for instance, myspace, LiveJournal, or your own personal website) in two ways. A URL reference can be used to "link" over to the gallery or javascript code can be used to "embed" the gallery object into your work. While this all sounds a bit technical, it should be easy to master. For those that have used YouTube to host and embed videos, a myartspace gallery will be very similar.

Galleries have an automatic "play" mode when they start up. This means that images begin to appear and the viewer moves from image to image every few seconds. The timing of that display can be controlled. Additionally, artists can supplement their images with an audio narration (that explains a bit about the painting/photograph) or with a music track. At any point, one can stop the autoplay mode and take over the process manually moving to the images they wish to see.

More details will be forthcoming over the next few weeks.

No comments: