Contemporary art finally explained simply: the big names, one click, two sentences, read aloud, that tell you why it matters.
The brief
My Contemporary was my project for the contemporary art history exam with Lucrezia Nardi. Her course did to me what the subject rarely does to anyone: it made me care. So the goal was not to prove I had studied, but to hand that feeling to as many people as possible.
The problem
The obstacle is never the art. It is the language around it: wall texts, catalogues and reviews written for people who already know. Ask why contemporary art is hard to understand and the honest answer is that nobody explains it plainly.
The archive and the search
The canvas holds works by artists of real weight, Damien Hirst, Yayoi Kusama, Marina Abramović among them. You search by artist, by work or by movement, and the results are laid out on an infinite canvas that pans and zooms like a map, so wandering, the way you drift through a museum, becomes the interface.
Two sentences, read aloud
Click a work and the audio guide starts: a voice that talks to you and, in two sentences at most, tells you why the work is famous, why it was made, what it represents and what it leaves you to think about. No essays, no jargon. The voice is generated with text to speech, and it is the version I had in mind from the start, finally built now that I had the time.
The build
Designed and built by me in React, Three.js and TypeScript. The hard part was not the canvas: it was deciding what to leave out of each explanation so it stayed short and still said something true.
The manifesto
Art should unite us, not divide us. Contemporary art belongs to a general public, not to an initiated one: more accessible, more understandable, more democratic.
Approach & craft
Everything is mine: concept, selection of the works, design, and the React, Three.js and TypeScript build.
The outcome
- An art history exam turned into a product for people who never took one
- Search by artist, work or movement, on a canvas you wander through
- Every work explained in two sentences, read aloud, without the gibberish