The Idea

[amommersteeg]

The original idea came from seeing all the wonderful art hidden around Montreal and found similar art after moving to Kitchener. It turns out the Downtown Kitchener Business Improvement Area (DTK BIA) creates a print and pdf version of different art work.

So this project is to be modelled after that guide but online to allow for additional content to be presented with the art:

• Sound
• Videos
• Games
• Links
• Additional images
• AR/VR
• (more ?)

Technically the thought is to use a static site generator (11ty) that can read a JSON file for content to generate the site. The reasons for using a static site are:

• cost (static content is cheap to host, github pages is a free example)
• leverage git to control content, provide a review process (Pull requests), and open it up to collabotors/public
• easy to deploy and reproduce, if successful in Kitchener the project can be forked to be used by other cities

Reference

• Google Arts & Culture
• Art Walk

[amommersteeg]

• Keep the code simple, try not to use a lot of frameworks (at least try) to make it easier for people to use, modify, and fork
• Add Wiki/Doc to the repo
• Add documentation, github actions to help with deployment to github pages and netlify
• Git and github to provide a way to allow for control on added posts and potential community submissions if the project is set up that way, even with the steap learning curve. This about adding a doc about how to add post and pr
• Why static over wordpress or other CMS?
• Process around adding themes to the core repo
• Explain themes, backstory and any links
• static pages with minimal javascript, the core functionality is available before javascript is loaded, this concept maybe harder as more advanced features get added.

[amommersteeg]

Starting point includes:

• Homepage/landing page
• about page -> both about the art/company and the art walk project
• Posts -> a few posts including write-up and picture(s) of the art
• Collection -> a list of the art work and ways to sort and filter
• Archive -> similar to collection but for art no longer displayed
• Map -> A map showing the location of the art work (google maps?)
• 404 page

Hoping to do those pages with two themes/projects to see how this works and present to people. The more advanced ideas can be added later, but these feel like the core features.

[amommersteeg]

Google Maps API is not longer free, so an alternative maybe need. Another idea is to dynamically generate a static image with an API and host that with legend the links to the posts.

Tools

• Google map static API -> https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/maps-static/start
• Mapbox -> https://docs.mapbox.com/playground/static/

Create a simple script that generates a static map on deployment or manually. Reads the meta data from posts to generate the required string from the API call. Add the API Key to the github repo secrets.

[amommersteeg]

Another possible tool for map creation https://leafletjs.com/