Cumulus helps make art accessible to students
Cumulus helps make art accessible to students
March 03, 2005: A Sydney University lecturer spoke last night at the latest Graphic Arts Services Association of Australia meeting about how much easier it has been to teach his students about the finest art work in the world since he has been using Cumulus.
Cumulus has allowed Julian Pefanis, a lecturer at the University of Sydney, in the Art History & Theory Department, to manage over 10,000 images into a database system where students can view, week by week, digital images of paintings, sculptures and much more.
Eventually, Dr. Pefanis aims to digitise a massive collection of 35mm slides (400,000) and to organise them into a usable database.
The central discipline of the Department used to concentrate on the history of painting, sculpture and architecture of Europe, with some reference to Australia.
However, over the last few years, it has experienced an explosion in visual studies, including the areas of film, television and the computer, photography, design, costume, style and cultural studies. The study of Aboriginal and Asian Art has also been introduced.
Pefanis said: "We have large undergraduates and postgraduate programs offering students courses in the history of art, from cave paintings to electronic arts...The real challenge for us is to distribute images to our students via the web."
"By using Web Publisher we are able to update virtual categories of images. Cumulus' facility of generating Quicktime slide shows of selected assets, with notes displayed under the images, means that we can generate slide-shows quickly and effectively, and display them on the Web or in lectures, without ever having to re-enter data."
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