The VRC will close on Monday May 14 for the summer due to Curator Susan Poague’s phased retirement schedule. The VRC will re-open in August. The date has yet to be determined, but I will keep you posted.
Have a great summer!!
Are you an Architecture student studying abroad in Rome? Are you a Landscape Architecture student or Community and Regional Planning student with a studio doing work on site? Are you using your iPhone or iPad to take photos out in the field? There is an app for that 
FieldNotesLT makes geo-referenced data collection and sharing easy when you are out in the field. FieldNotesLT is a note taking tool that lets you locate your position using GPS, view a satellite map of the location, take notes, and collect photographs — all in geo-referenced format. If you want, you can email this information as a kmz or text file.
Here are some screen shots from the iTunes Store:
FieldNotesLT is FREE in the iTunes store.
The Visual Resources Collection will be closed for the week of April 16 – April 20 so that I can attend my annual conference of the Visual Resources Association. The conference is being held in Albuquerque, NM this year. I will be back and the VRC will re-open on April 23.
I will be checking email daily. Look for photos that I will be posting here and on the VRC Facebook page.
On Friday the National Gallery of Art rolled out its new online image resource – NGA Images. This is a repository of digital images of works in the National Gallery of Art collections that allows users to search, browse, share, and download images that are in the public domain.
From the press release:
“As the Gallery marks its 71st anniversary, it is fitting that we introduce NGA Images and an accompanying open access policy, which underscore the Gallery’s mission and national role in making its collection images and information available to scholars, educators, and the general public,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “In turn this supports research, teaching, and personal enrichment; promotes interdisciplinary research; and nurtures an appreciation of all that inspires great works of art.”
Here is an image of the home page:
To get started, enter a search term in the search box at the top. I entered the term “garden” and that returned 274 images. The search results page is very similar to Plato’s Cave, so users should find this site very user friendly.
Choose an image, and the action icons below it will lead you in various directions. Save it to a Lightbox, view detailed information, download the image in a form suitable for presentation and screen use, or download a high resolution image suitable for publication. This is the image with detailed information:
Part of the National Gallery of Art’s mission to serve the people of the United States is to provide open access to online images of works in its collection that are believed to be in the public domain. NGA Images are available, free of charge, for any use, commercial or non-commercial. This is a great new resource for us all!
Please note: The VRC will be closed the week of March 12 – March 16 for Spring Break. The VRC will re-open on Monday March 19.
Take some time off and relax!
Here are some random images that have recently been added to Plato’s Cave:
San Giovanni in Laterano
Pacioli's Alphabet: L
Little Sparta, Ian Hamilton Finlay
Now going up on a floor near you! Last week I started hanging new eye-catching Plato’s Cave posters around the College of Design building. A collaborative effort between me and our in-house graphic design staff person Alison Weidemann and graduate assistant Rahele Jomepour, we have created a series of posters that will be informative as well as entertaining and enlightening. And, they include handy tear-away cards with the web address for Plato’s Cave, so if you are always forgetting where we are, now you can just refer to your card and you’ll be just a click away.
This one went up on February 16:
And this one went up on February 23:
Watch for more in the coming weeks, and don’t forget to Like Us On Facebook!
A multi-year project in the Visual Resources Collection has now come to a close. The Architecture images collection is now completely scanned. All images are available as thumbnails for viewing and JPEGs for download. The grand total of Architecture images is (drum roll please) 83,198.
Here are just a few samples of what you might find if you do a search on Plato’s Cave:
Taj Mahal, Agra, India
Egerstrom House and Stable, Luis Barragan, Architect. Mexico City, Mexico
Cite Universitaire, Brazilian Dormitory, Le Corbusier, Architect. Paris, France
Unity Temple, Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect. Oak Park, Illinois
To find images in the Architecture collection, go to the Advanced Search on Plato’s Cave. Using the pull-down menus, go to Field and select Medium. Under the Qualifier select “Equal to” and type architecture in the Criteria box. Click on “Continue”.
You’ll probably want to narrow your search to a specific architect or location You can continue to narrow your search if you add another search line in the And/Or box and choose a field such as Artist Name, Title, Location, Country or Keywords. Discovery happens you do a little exploring.
Explore Architecture on Plato’s Cave soon!
Celebrate Black History Month by exploring the work of this 96-year-old black female American artist whose body of work spans over 70 years. You can listen to a radio story and read about her on NPR.
Or view a catalog of her sculpture from an exhibit at the Chrysler Museum of Art here.
The Sculpture of Elizabeth Catlett Catalog
The VRC has a many examples of her sculpture and prints in Plato’s Cave. You can view examples of her work by searching on her name, Elizabeth Catlett. Be sure to check “All words” to narrow your search to only her art. Here are the results that will come up:
Mother and Child
Head
My Right Is a Future of Equality with Other Americans
Plato’s Cave is a great tool for image research or for study. But, you may ask, what can I do with images once I’ve found them? The Light Table feature is a helpful component of the Plato’s Cave website that will help you manage your images.
If you are a student studying images for a quiz or test first save your images to the Light Table. Do that by clicking on the “Check All” box and then clicking on the “Save to Light Table” box.
The images will each have a red check mark to the right. If you wish to be more selective, click the check boxes for individual images. Conversely, de-select an individual image by clicking on the check box again.
To view your images click on the “Light Table” option in the string at the upper right. This will take you to the Light Table where a pull-down menu will give you further options.
One of the options listed is “Flash Cards”. Flash Cards are a great way to study for quizzes or to take notes on in class. See this earlier blog post for a tutorial on making Flash Cards that are customized for you.
Another option from the pull-down menu is downloading the images in JPEG form. If you will be using your images for a presentation, or adding them to illustrate a paper, this is what you need. Begin by clicking on “Download Selected JPEGS”. A box will pop up that looks like this:
Click on the “File 1″ link and another box will open:
Make sure “Save File” is selected, click on OK and you will be downloading a .zip file with your images in compressed form. Using the appropriate software to unzip these files, you can then save them to your own computer in JPEG form.
If you are finished using the images on the Light Table, go again to “Light Table Actions” and choose “Clear Light Table”.
Sense of Patterns is an on-going project, a series of printed data visualizations aiming to depict the behaviors of masses in different public spaces. The visualizations have a focus on the patterns of moving entities in public like commuters, cars and public transportation vehicles as well as the interaction between these entities and physical structures like roads, sidewalks, buildings and parks. The project intends to provide strong visuals on what we all experience in our daily lives in different cities.
The first edition of the project consists of six A1 size prints and a video animation based on the data related to Vienna and its suburbs.
Here are two examples:
Sense of Patterns - One Day of Taxis, Vienna
Sense of Patterns - One Day of Taxis, Vienna
To see more visualization galleries visit visualizing.org.
