{"id":19,"date":"2010-10-06T13:45:06","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T13:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/halfslant.com\/?p=19"},"modified":"2026-03-09T19:52:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T19:52:25","slug":"interactive-monet-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/halfslant.com\/?p=19","title":{"rendered":"Interactive Monet website is a good start…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Clap your hands to make the magpie fly<\/p><\/div>\n

The frontier of online exhibition viewing and experience is a very exciting one to me, and one that I hope can turn the reality of going to a museum on its head. The Journey<\/a> through Monet’s works at the Grand Palais on their website is a joyous step in this direction, animating and engaging the viewer both physically and visually, in a way that the hustle and bustle of an exhibition space cannot. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0That said, all this technical potential \u00c2\u00a0falls short and relies on quite simple \u00c2\u00a0tricks and riddles to move through the journey , rather than taking the opportunity to teach us something about Monet.<\/p>\n

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As children develop, they reinforce what they learn visually through touch. \u00c2\u00a0Putting the blue triangle in the blue triangle shaped hole. Knowing that our blanky is soft. \u00c2\u00a0Our vocabulary is built on our sensual experiences. \u00c2\u00a0My impression of these interactive features such as “pull the hooter to make the train leave” seem to play on this reinforcing power of interactivity. \u00c2\u00a0Sure, we are only touching our computers but these actions have an affect on your screen. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0And it is true that these affects are truly arresting .I just wish that they had taken advantage of these great tools to really go into his paintings.
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\nMy first problem with this is that to begin the journey you must spill over Monet\u00e2\u20ac™s ink well. \u00c2\u00a0Monet was not a writer. \u00c2\u00a0He was a painter. \u00c2\u00a0Why aren’t we starting with his pallet, paintbrushes and canvas? \u00c2\u00a0Although the blooming and leaking animations that bring forth the images of his work are wonderful, they painfully pale in comparison to his work. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Rather than putting us in the shoes of Monet, and allowing us to see the progression of one of his works, information that we have access to, we are looking at shimmery reproductions of placemats. \u00c2\u00a0So little of the journey really takes a look at the brushstrokes of this painter, instead we are stuck in the contextual location of the paintings as a conceptual \u00c2\u00a0starting point for each step of the journey.<\/p>\n

Why? Who cares about making the windmill spin? Or the poppies fly? It\u00e2\u20ac™s not like Monet had these god-like powers, he just showed up and painted.
\nInstead,I think \u00c2\u00a0we should be allowed to see Monet grappling with his vision, one that left him near blind before his death. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0As someone who is legally blind( in that without corrective eyewear I can barely see anything beyond shapes and forms in the distance) I have always felt strongly attached to Monet. \u00c2\u00a0When I look at his paintings, I see a man desperately struggling to capture a world that is disappearing into blurriness around him. \u00c2\u00a0But I also don’t feel pity. \u00c2\u00a0When in Normandy, or Rouen or any place he \u00c2\u00a0painted, I always take off my glasses and image trying to paint a place I could barely see. \u00c2\u00a0But what is left are sublime patches of color, moving and floating around as brightly and close as the faces of the people around me. \u00c2\u00a0In Monet the air , the sunlight, the aura of places has \u00c2\u00a0a real weight and presence, one that I see floating in Rothko, in Turner \u00c2\u00a0and Pisarro and whenever I take off my glasses\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\nIf I were lucky enough to have been on this team of designers, animators , programmers , copy writers and interface designers I would not have entered into the silly details of each painting as a crux for my journey through Monet, I would begin with his palette knife, with mixing colors, I would allow users to try to do this themselves. \u00c2\u00a0I would have taken video of the places he has painted today and severely distorted them \u00c2\u00a0to look the way they may have looked to him, I would have zoomed in to each brush-stroke and travelled through two or three paintings , rather than thirty. \u00c2\u00a0Monet painted the same motifs obsessively, and an animated comparison of them would have been stunning.<\/p>\n

My compliments go to the team who created the journey, I can imagine its one of those things that has to please many people and be quite simple, but I can’t wait to see an interactive online experience that takes advantage of the skills of its very talented team to create something that will teach us something true and real about the artist, rather than having us pressing button to make the bells ring in the Cathedral he painted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n