The arts are an integral part of our lives, but how are they making the transition to our devices?
I had fun working on a segment on this topic with host Nancy Guppy and the staff of Art Zone on the Seattle Channel — sampling the landscape of apps in areas including painting, poetry, music and literature. We were fortunate to have the help of Art Zone’s Chelsea Sadler, who did extensive research as we came up with the list; and GeekWire’s multitalented Emily Shahan, who helped to show the potential of iPad artistry with a series of great sketches.
Watch the segment below — including my, um, unforgettable TV singing debut — and continue reading below the video for a rundown and links to the featured apps.
Poetry for iPhone, iPad and Android, free app from the Poetry Foundation. This app lets you mix and match different themes and moods to find poems on a wide variety of topics — such as commitment and love, or boredom and nature. My favorite feature is the “spin,” which matches themes randomly for some unexpected combinations.
Sound Hound music search app for iOS and Android. This app not only recognizes songs on the radio, it also lets you hum or sing a tune to find out the name and other details — a useful scenario, in many situations. This is what led to the aforementioned singing. Thank goodness for Chelsea, who was able to step in to save the day.
Fresh Paint for Windows 8: A past GeekWire App of the Week, this realistic painting app was made by Microsoft to showcase the potential of touch-screen devices, such as the Surface, running Windows 8. My favorite feature is the fan button that “dries” the canvas to allow for layering of paint.
Those were the three that we spent the most time on in the segment. Here are the others that we listed toward the end.
- Shakespeare, on the iPhone/iPad (Free)
- Comic Book, on the iPad/iPhone ($1.99)
- Seattle Art Museum Audio Guide, on the iPhone/iPad (Free)
- Paper by FiftyThree, on the iPad (Free)
Thanks to Nancy and the Art Zone crew for all their work on this; I had a great time. Be sure to check out the Art Zone show page for air times and more details. See the full episode here, including a memorable performance by the duo The Local Strangers.
And to get a sense for what’s possible in Paper by FiftyThree, here is more of Emily’s work.
