Sokak Sanatına Erişim: Türkiye İçin Bir Web Sayfası Önerisi

Abstract

Street art is important from a historical, cultural, and sociological perspective, as it not only carries artistic value but also reflects uncensored social trends during the period of its creation. Protecting street art as a cultural heritage material physically is challenging due to factors such as weather conditions, susceptibility to surface damage, or illegal status. Therefore, digitization plays an extremely important role in the sustainable management of artworks. It is quite difficult for cultural memory institutions responsible for the management of cultural heritage products to identify artworks that can exist in any part of the city and disappear within hours. An approach that embraces participatory heritage and utilizes crowd-sourcing methods, involving the community in the cultural heritage management process, provides a practical solution for the long-term preservation of artworks. The success of web pages that make digitized artworks accessible to the public in terms of usability directly impacts user satisfaction. This involvement of users in the process of digitizing street art and the desire of potential participants to be part of the process can be facilitated by the level of success of these web pages in terms of usability features. The aim of this study is to examine street art websites at the universal level in terms of usability and the crowd-sourcing methods they employ, identify the strengths and weaknesses of the leading platform in terms of usability features, and propose a website for the preservation and accessibility of street art in Turkey based on the findings. Street art websites at the universal level were evaluated in terms of usability and crowd-sourcing methods through content analysis. The findings indicate that the websites are weak in terms of institutional information and policies regarding artwork reproduction and copyright, as well as insufficient descriptive data about the artworks. Additionally, the most common crowd-sourcing method encountered was collection completion. The evaluation of the leading platform was conducted by usability experts using heuristic analysis. Following the review, it was concluded that the platform is strong in terms of aesthetic and minimalist design, consistency and standards, but weak in terms of user control and freedom, as well as flexibility and efficiency features. This study, which provides a web page proposal based on literature review and findings, is thought to make significant contributions to the literature in the field due to the lack of literature on street art and management in the world and in Turkey, offering a solution for the preservation of street art and its potential benefits for the sustainable management of other heritage products based on the participatory heritage approach.