TED Speak: Introducing SDVAN View Art Now App

By Patricia Frischer

The New Yorker Magazine printed an article Listen and Learn (July 9 &16, 2012) by Nathan Heller about TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) video presentations. If you are like me you have watched a number of these and they are almost always wonderfully produced. I often asked myself how these people from all walks of life were able to be so entertaining, dedicated and passionate about their subjects. I recommend you read the article for a full description, but one small paragraph gave me some good clues. I decided to try this formula out in introducing our new San Diego View Art Now (SDVAN) App.

1. Opening of Direct address: As part of the DNA of Creativity project, we are going forward with a new asset for the San Diego Visual Arts Network, which is a logical outgrowth of our service to over 2000 visual art resources for the SD community. Our events calendar has listed over 7000 events since our inception in 2003 and we are now planning to create a smart phone app that will give users who are pin pointed by GPS a view on their phone map of events occurring in a radius around them.
   
   
2. Narrative of personal stake: I arrived in SD in 1996 from London, went to the MoCASD and asked for the visual arts guide to the city. They laughed and shrugged at the same time. No guide existed. As I discovered the richness of the visual art scene in SD, I saw no reason not to share that information. Six years later we launched SDVAN with a resource directory and events calendar. Now, to take advantage of on the go needs, we are developing the smart phone app, which will access the data from our events calendar. We also wanted to have the fun and stay on the cutting edge by adding an AR (augmented reality) component to the app. AR is using the camera function of the phone to give an additional layer of information for the viewer.
   
   
3. Research Summary: We used technology specially commission as 10 years in the internet world is 50 years in other industries and there was no standard software existing at that time for the design we used. Now researching how to make an app means understanding our PHP data bases, commissioning software developers and graphic designers. Our research into AR is just beginning and you can read a past A+ Augmented Reality Summary. We will be creating a dedicated website for San Diego View Art Now (SD VAN) which will be compatible for smart phones and has the web application on the home page, plus more information about our team, history, how to list your events, lesson plans, and special launch events for the app.
   
   
4. Précis of potential application: Imagine you are out drinking with friends after work and you have the evening stretching before you. Call up SDVAN on your phone by clicking the icon and up pops all the events near you. Want to find something on the way home, click to view by location. Planning a future rendezvous, click to locate events by date. And in phase two of this app you may be able to see lost graffiti after it has been painted out, or locate a map to entire open studio event, maybe even see a secret layer of a painting not visible with the human eye alone.
   
   
5. Revelation to drive it home: The New Yorker is already supplying an app for all of its cultural events. I just did a Google search for Visual Arts Apps and SDVAN appeared on the first page right after the Wikipedia definition of fine art. Other cities will have this technology soon, but just as SD Visual Arts Network was cutting edge when it began, we can be on the fore front of this technology for our community, build audience for visual arts events and get one step closer to re-branding San Diego as one of the world’s most innovative regions.