Art Babble

ArtBabble: the YouTube of the arts
From Richard Serra to origami, there's a new place to watch arts films on the web. Ruth Jamieson delves into ArtBabble's fascinating online collection
Ruth Jamieson
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 April 2009 13.05 BST


Where the BBC's iPlayer made watching TV on your computer as natural as writing an email, ArtBabble.org is set to do the same for viewing arts films. Now, instead of catching up on EastEnders, you can broaden your mind with arts films from a handful of key galleries. The films, all of which can be commented on, shared and interacted with, take you behind the scenes of major art galleries, offer interviews with world-famous artists and transport you to lecture halls all over the globe.

The concept itself was conceived at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). Co-creator Rob Stein, describes it as, "a website dedicated to telling stories about art." His cohort Daniel Incandela adds, "we wanted to create a community focused site that delivered exceptionally high quality video, an interactive viewing experience and a great diversity of content from multiple sources." Both agree that the aim is to create, the online destination for video art content. The success of their blustering mission statement remains to be seen, but what the pair have made is a fairly impressive arts video portal, matchmaking arts lovers with high quality arts videos produced in galleries all over the US.

After a year or so of testing, IMA has opened Artbabble's doors this month to recruit more arts institutions to supply content to the site. Alongside IMA's in-house material, ArtBabble now includes videos from the Museums of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco, Art21, the New York Public Library and Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Highlights include Brice Martin on his painting Cold Mountain (SFMOMA Artcast); the installation of Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipse IV and Intersection II to the Rockerfeller Sculpture Garden; the Design by the Book series where various artists draw inspiration from the New York Public Library; a conversation with the rather wonderful Jenny Holzer; (Art21) and Magnificent 11, a documentary celebrating some of Los Angeles's greatest permanent collection artworks (LACMA).

UK readers will note that as interesting as it all sounds, the Tate has been offering a vaguely similar – if more limited – service for a few years. On their site, you can go on a studio tour with Jeff Koons, browse through the gallery's recordings of talks with artists, and watch some of the performances hosted in Tate Modern. Logic would dictate that if ArtBabble really is committed to becoming the go-to site for arts enthusiasts, it won't be long before it bundles these – and more from multimedia arts institutions worldwide – in one place.

But what makes the site exciting isn't just its breadth of content; it's the depth. Throughout the films on ArtBabble, "notes" appear on the right hand of the scene, attached to relevant points in the film. If another artist is referred to, a "note" links to their Wikipedia entry, if a news event crops up, there's a link to the newspaper report. So, in a half-hour talk about the Hello Kitty brand you're offered a link to the online home of Hello Kitty, Japanese tourism information and an introduction to Anime. In a film about the Louvre's restoration of Greek and Roman sculptures, you'll be given an introduction to mosaic, a primer on Greek mythology and suggestions for further viewing. You can even attach your own notes to a relevant frame of the film, rather than in a comments section below.

ArtBabble has, essentially, been described as YouTube for the arts, but with a name like "Artbabble" you might wonder if it's in danger of being a little up its own tube. But, the site is saved by its execution: notably, a very sweetly-designed intuitive interface, simple pen-on-paper look and tasteful pastel pallet. Importantly, it is as truly accessible to someone who might sneer at the Turner prize, as it is to a critic who sits on the judging panel. And yes, while arts video content already exists on the web, it is still scattered. You can hunt it down in the dusty "online wings" of some galleries, or make a stab at finding it on YouTube and Blip.tv, but it is, in the main, sidelined. Hopefully, with ArtBabble, online arts videos have graduated to a place of their own where they can be nurtured, loved and easily discovered.