Creating art for the iPad

Minneapolis Photographer Joann Verburg is used to having her large photographs - tryptichs of olive trees, portraits of people floating in water - hanging on the walls of such prestigious museums as the Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center.

Now she wants them in your purse or briefcase.

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JoAnn Verburg in her Minneapolis studio. She approached the publishers at Location Books with the idea for an iPad app. (MPR Photo/Euan Kerr)

As Euan Kerr reports, Verburg has just released a new collection of images as an iPad application as a new way for people to experience her work.

The iPad lets a viewer do what would be unthinkable in a gallery: to touch the images, to zoom in and look deeper, Verburg said.

"Some places where you see raindrops hanging on the tips of branches or you see a blossom that's absolutely sharp in focus," she said. "There are a lot of places that are out of focus and especially if you enlarge them on your iPad they become abstractions and so there is a lot of variety as there is in life."

There are some intriguing forces at work here. One is about location. Until now, experiencing Verburg's work meant visiting a museum or buying an expensive photography book. "As It Is Again" is a free application, available to anyone with an iPad. You can't get it in book form.

Verburg's publishers are hoping the new application will change the way many people use technology, providing them with opportunities to slow down, instead of speed up.

You can hear the entire story by clicking on the audio link below:

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