All of the articles that we read for this week center around a very important theme which is how does one make museum exhibits more accessible without running into the problem of diminishing its value. I feel that sometimes technology can be a sort of spoiler in that one can’t see something online and then get a first impression of it in person which arguably would be a more meaningful experience. That being said I was delighted to read the New York Times piece on how there needs to be a balance between what pieces of art are made available online. The issue that this article deals with is that with such a high level of content available online, adding the art to stand next to the mass amount of media diminishes the value of the museum pieces or “watering down” to quote the article. The article on Rhizome makes an excellent comparison with Youtube with an incredible amount of video available that not a single person could watch every video posted on youtube.
This reminded me of several articles that I have read that tell of the “tech bubble”. Essentially, the “tech bubble” is the high evaluations of technology companies and startup companies that are being overvalued because of how excited the market is. There is speculation that the bubble will burst, just like the real estate bubble in the early 2000s.
Vanity Fair Tech Bubble is Full of Hot Air
There is a danger in over saturating the market with so much content. I am not saying that technology should not be displayed online and distributed that way, however there needs to be a balance. I feel that as a digital humanities student, many people over look that like many humanities disciplines, there is no right answer but rather gray areas and debates. I don’t believe that there is a yes or no answer to wether art should be published online because it will diminish its value as a physical object but rather there needs to be a balance. Art online should inspire people to visit museums without spoiling all of the art and the experience of being in the museum in person.