Back to back against sweeping job cuts that saw 675 employees axed earlier this week (CI No 3,501), Intel Corp yesterday announced it has dished out $6m to fund an on-line art gallery and exhibition for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In what the Whitney described as the largest corporate contribution ever made to an art museum exhibition, the chip- making giant will sponsor the museum’s upcoming exhibition: The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000, which is due to begin in April 1999. But the key focus of the press conference, held at the museum Thursday, wasn’t the 1,400 works which will go on show next year, but an early preview of the show’s web site, co-developed by Intel, Whitney Museum curators and other partners including Iceland-based, Oz Interactive Inc. Former CEO, now chairman of Intel, Andy Grove, was briefly in attendance to ‘walk’ the audience through the virtual gallery: a 3-D experience, like the computer game Doom, where visitors can ‘walk’ around the gallery and view the artworks. Special buttons on screen allow the user to select video or audio clips which provide additional information about the painting, sculpture or photo. But the web site is being constantly improved and updated to provide the most lifelike, rich experience, Kevin Teixiera, Intel’s manager of Americas marketing programs told ComputerWire. Thor Gunnarsson, VP strategic relations, Oz Interactive, said this was the first time its 3D technology, called Oz Virtual, had been used in a project of this size. He said the company had been working on the technology for several years.
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