Artsteps

 I have posted about Artsteps in the past, but I have never got around to using it properly until now.

Artsteps is an online 3D gallery and exhibition creation app and it is free.

View of App

It has a very simple user interface and is quite intuitive. They provide a selection of gallery templates or you can create your own with a variety of walls, doors, textures and frames.

It felt a little restrictive, but I had fun finding creative ways to give each work (or pair of works) its own space.

I was lucky to be given a series of fine art prints, titled 'Preston' by Brendan Shaw, with which to create a virtual exhibition for him. The images can be easily uploaded, imported into the gallery, resized, and placed utilizing an eye-line tool to ensure consistency throughout the exhibition. I didn't frame the prints but left them as black-edged panels, which suited the images quite well.

Pixelated images.

I think I did a fairly decent job of laying out the exhibition and the whole experience is quite slick. However, there are some problems with the completed show. One, the images are obviously downsized by the software and appear very pixelated... even the detail view. Two, there are so many exhibitions being created worldwide, on this very popular platform, that your exhibition is immediately buried and lost and is unlikely to be seen or even found... I have had 4 visits since I published it a couple of weeks ago! (and I think two of those are from me!!!).

Artsteps saw a 60% increase in usage over lockdown and did a great job of bringing this technology to creatives. It looks like their focus is changing though, and you can now buy premium or bespoke galleries from them, which I am sure will look great, with none of the pixelation or anonymity apparent in mine. I have yet to visit Artsteps with my VR headset...

You can visit the exhibition I created here - https://www.artsteps.com/view/633582e58feea1d3cfcbce45 - (I could do with some extra hits! :). And, you can visit an exhibition I created for Brendan below and you can view my other projects on my website - https://www.cassetta.co.uk/

I will be creating a new exhibition for Brendan's featured prints over the next weeks, so watch this space.

If you are reading this blog and feel you can add something to my research then please comment… even if you are correcting me or don’t agree with something that I say.