Lexington, KY - "There's an app for that" is a phrase to which we are getting accustomed in our language. With the advent of smartphones, applications (or apps, as they are called) abound, and they bring us news, games, images and options for how we will receive our information. It's hard to imagine that a mere decade ago cell phones were few and smart phones were still on the drawing board. Now we live in a digital universe and wonder how in the world it was ever any other way. An infinite amount of information is now available with a few taps of our fingertips on a touch screen.
Not to be relegated to the sidelines of this revolution, educators and students in the museum studies class in the Department of Art at the University of Kentucky and the Gaines Center for the Humanities at UK hatched an idea to create an application about central Kentucky's public art sites, called TakeItArtSide. Sound easy? It's not, and everyone involved learned firsthand just how much goes into the creation of this kind of technology.
In the beginning was the idea to have students in Christine Huskisson's museum studies class aid in creating a master plan for the Legacy Trail. The project grew to become Museum Without Walls and to include a wider inventory and documentation of public art in the central Kentucky region. Partnering with Gaines Center for the Humanities director Lisa Broome, it quickly became apparent that there were some additional great uses for this information and a new product. TakeItArtSide was born - or more accurately, developed and made downloadable. Its mission is to promote education and enhance the public's interactions with the growing stock of public art in Kentucky.
Huskisson and her students dove in and began visiting sites throughout central Kentucky to inventory and document Kentucky's public art. Central Kentucky isn't known for its public art yet, but the task at hand - to map and record what exists - was enormous.
"We met for class at lots of different places," said Devan Vannarsdall, a former student in Huskisson's class and a member for a semester of the team working on TakeItArtSide. "For instance, one day, class met in Frankfort and we documented all the public art in Frankfort, like an amazing piece called Nexus by Erika Strecker and Tony Higdon that is quite impressive. We also met in Georgetown to include their art sites in the data. It was a great experience - building the app from the ground up, and to get to use the skills we were developing through our studies for a real-life thing that would exist long after. It wasn't like a paper that you turn in and then it gets thrown away. We felt like we were really contributing to the creation of something to benefit others."
Vannarsdall went on to explain that the class broke into groups and committees that covered every aspect of creating the app, from marketing to educational uses to the administrative side of the venture.
"We learned so much partnering with Apax Software here in Lexington as they worked on the software, and then we had to go through the process of sweating out the time waiting for approval notification from Apple, saying the application met their standards for use. We got to make many decisions on the design and functions of the app. It was a great experience," he added.
The experience gave students skills to take into the business world. Sarah Piester worked on the app for a semester and came up with the idea to make a Gallery Hop filter for TakeItArtSide that guides users around Lexington to the locations and events during Lexington's Gallery Hop nights. She graduated and landed the position of director of community relations and special events for the Lexington Legends, where she uses many of the skills she gained while working with Museum Without Walls and the TakeItArtSide project.
"It was absolutely fantastic," Piester said. "My experience with TakeItArtside was very instrumental in my moving into the career I have now. Before working on the app, I never gave a lot of thought to where applications came from. As students, we got to think through and create every aspect of the app - the features, games, the cross-curricular educational part, right down to the colors and tabs," she added.
GPS technology is used for the mapping of the various sites and directs users to the art's locations. The application download is free and is available for both iPhone and Android devices. When bringing up the app on a phone, users will receive an image of a nearby piece of public art, with information on the artist, medium and location. From there maps can be accessed, along with an inventory of available sites, lesson plans useful to students and teachers from middle school through college level, and games that reward users for visiting the most sites with titles such as "Art Traveler" and "Art Adventurer." There's even a recent addition of a new component called ArtFit, which helps users burn calories as they visit sites.
TakeItArtside also features a crowd-sourcing feature, allowing users to record the condition of public art and report vandalism or upkeep needs. Co-founder Lisa Broome of the Gaines Center for the Humanities hopes this function of the app creates an opportunity for people to take ownership and help preserve art.
"The new filter system gives TakeItArtside users greater control over how they access information about a broader range of cultural assets, from public art to museums, galleries, historic homes and archaeological sites - all cultural assets that users can enjoy learning about," Broome added.
A recent addition to the app includes historic sites and homes and also museums, art galleries and artists' studios. The very latest wrinkle adds archeological sites to the ever-expanding application.
With uses in education, tourism and art and historic preservation, TakeItArtSide has grown beyond any of the creators' original visions.
"The collaborative nature of this project has been what has really moved it along so fast. A lot of work is going on at the same time by dedicated students and professionals. We have received a lot of help from Lexington Visual Collective, Apax Software, UK Department of Art, the Gaines Center for the Humanities, LexArts, Lexington Art League, Georgetown College and Transylvania University just to name a few. The list is long," said Huskisson. "We want to enhance the public-art experience for the traveler, the resident and the art lover. We hope the app will encourage everyone to engage with public art in a new way. We think this can have an impact on tourism, business and education, not to mention aid in preservation - plus we hope it inspires people to create more art."
The TakeItArtside team continues to evolve each semester, and new ideas are plentiful. There are plans to expand to include all 120 counties of Kentucky and also to add video interviews with artists.
To learn more, to see a demo or to download TakeItArtside, visit the website Kentuckymuseumwithoutwalls.com.