Assessment of Project on the Sculptures in the Grounds of the National Gallery of Australia

• The Database: There are exactly 20 works in the grounds of the National Gallery of Australia. In addition, the Gallery holds maquettes, preliminary drawings and photographs of the works. Depending on the work, it was sometimes more desirable to publish only 1 image of the work, whereas for other works it was important to show how the context has changed over time.
• The Essay: Within the word limit it was only possible to write an entry for each work, plus brief biographies for the 7 sculptors who actually came to the Gallery to install their work. (However, I did find biographies for 3 additional sculptors on the Internet.) It was unfortunate that there was no spellcheck on the server for a final edit, and that imorted text could not be edited.
• The Internet (Imported Text and Images): I had expected to find more useful material published on the Internet, such as a biography of Auguste Rodin. Unfortunately, what I found was either abstracts for books about the sculptors, or web sites for artists with the same name but who were not the sculptors represented (e.g. Neil Dawson and Nigel Hall).
• External links: After careful consideration of the relevance of the material on the Net, I took copies of the text or graphics directly into the project. I also set up some direct links to Web sites, as well as a link to my E-mail address so as to facilitate contact with visitors to the project site. (Sadly, the NGA's own Web page was closed just before I began putting my project together.)
• The Graphics: Working at the Gallery meant that it was relatively easy to obtain colour slides of the works. (Sculptures in a public place do not have copyright protection.) In addition, for the experience, I did borrow and use the digital camera to photograph a few of the works.
• The Map: It was extremely difficult to find a map of the whole site which would fit any of the scanners available to me. The map eventually obtained showed everything except the link to the High Court Building. It took 2 weeks of effort to make this map useable. This including setting up the hot spots and links to the 20 works, in such a way that the functionality will not be compromised when the project is moved to another server and/ or a CD.
• Page Design: Having a lot of slides meant that a plain page format was best. However, for the plain text page on the history of the design of the grounds, I put in a suitable, background transparency.
• Scanning and Digitalising: Most of the scanning was done using the Art History scanner. Later images were scanned on a flat bed scanner. The results are of fair quality but, probably owing to my inexperience, neither gave consistently good results.
• Photoshop and Resolution: I had a lot of images and initially found it difficult to balance the resolution and the memory available. (If I had more time and memory, I would have aimed for a higher, more uniform standard of colour and size.)
• Sound: I had been very keen to incorporate sound clips, not only because sound is part of the experience of the viewing sculpture in an outdoor setting, but also to add a further level of multimedia to my presentation. I went to the trouble of making a tape of sounds in the grounds but then I found the birdsong document of the Australian National Botanic Gardens on the Net. From this I had evidence that it would not be realistic to incorporate sound useing current technology, especially given the amount of memory available to my project. (e.g. The sound clip for a Kookaburra is listed as 477K. Ref: http://155.187.10.12:80/sounds)
• Planning and File Management: Fortunately, I drew up a good plan and flow charts quite early in the process and these proved invaluable. Whilst it did take me quite some time to be able to work in a UNIX system, I now feel quite confident about managing the files, (listing, opening, editing, moving, opening, saving etc.), cleaning the cache and changing the permission levels, and so on. However, if I had more time, I would have been more consistent in the way I marked up the text and in the naming conventions used for both files and images.
• Future Development: I think that my project has a lot of potential for development as a CD ROM for my prime target audience, senior High School students. However, to be viable it would need more information about the sculptors and their influences; about the methods of making sculpture, siteing (context) and conservation of the works; and editing of the imported text and graphics.
• Conclusion: I learnt a lot about computing systems, in a short period of time. It was a great challenge but I think the result was worth the effort.

Jane Hyden

21 October 1995