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Comment by ryankupyn | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the most well-executed attempts to bring real-world art online I've ever seen.

I've always hoped that the internet could expand access to art, but I've always felt that the experience of viewing art and commentary through a computer really fails to capture the essence of experiencing it in real life. I hope that other institutions will learn from this and apply the lessons to their own cultural mission.

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This reminds me of those educational/cultural interactive cdroms that were a thing in the 90s/early 2000s and that my local library had a for a 1-week rent. Most of them were kinda fun (for a kid) even though I wished in those times they had a copy of Diablo 1 instead! Anyway, it just seems to me that technology has lost the drive to produce this kind of content which was more prevalent before.

Mmm. I found it too annoying to use --- the commentary is exceedingly opinionated about what it is it thinks I should be looking at; I'd zoom in on a detail that attracted my attention, click on the button to bring up the text, and while I was reading it would pan and zoom randomly to something else. Synchronised to some audio track I wasn't listening to, maybe? But I hadn't finished looking at the first thing, dammit. And then it would pan and zoom again when putting the text away.

It felt like it was punishing me for trying to explore the (incredible) painting on my own, rather than following the approved guided tour.

This is pretty good too.

http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/index_sistina_en.htm

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