• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 1, 2011

Media people typically think of their business as a combination of art and science, but WPP's Schematic unit has developed some science, well the applied science of digital media technology, anyway, to give the people of the world better access to important works of art. The interactive and digital design agency has created the interface for a new Google initiative to bring great works of art to the Internet.

Dubbed the Art Project Powered by Google , the initiative features a Web-based interface that will allow users to experience virtual walking tours through 17 of the world's great museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi Gallery, the Hermitage Museum and the Palace of Versailles.

A custom viewer designed by Schematic allows up-close exploration for more than 1,000 artworks, with featured paintings shown at an ultra-high resolution that reveals individual brush strokes and cracks.

Schematic described the interface as both "deceptively simple" and "immersive," and said it was built by "weaving together" a number of standard Google applications, such as Street View, Picasa, YouTube, Google Docs and Google Scholar.

Schematic also helped create a social media component for the project that allows users to build their own private collections of favorite works to share with friends.