I've worked for a string of online art retailers and publishers over the the last decade, and I'm a bit baffled by this move by Amazon.
I just don't think it's a very good way to browse for art. That said, if you know specifically what you want, it's a pretty good way to connect with galleries.
My guess is "soon" we'll have a 500 dpi full color e-ink kindle to admire rentable art. And perhaps a giant e-ink kindle to hang on the wall for exactly that purpose.
One of my long term "in my infinite spare time" projects has been to build a nice small (well, what passes for small now...) HDTV size digital picture frame and rotate artwork on it. I figure if I can keep the capital cost under a couple hundred bucks (no problemo) and power consumption under a hundred watts (aka about $100/yr, also Probably no problem) then I'll do it. This is all well within my ability to do it, other than spare time.
I don't want a COTS digital pix frame because the API (if any) sucks and you can't buy one bigger than roughly a postcard whereas I want "big artwork" sized. Also I want high res.
Another interesting idea about "real art" is most TV user interfaces have the lamest most uncool backgrounds and "artwork" I've ever seen. I'd like a nice piece of real art instead. A big digital clearinghouse would help.
You could use Flickr's API to acquire the images. Filter on interestingness, favorite tag and size. If it is only for your personal use, there are no limitations -- otherwise filter on license.
The geek in me agrees, the art collector in me doesn't.
For me at least, the moment you display "art" on screens, its significance is diluted. When it's not "permanent" it feels like decoration or worse, a screensaver.
Having said this, some of those in the art establishment have the same point of view about a recent project I was involved in which brought art from the UK's public collections onto 22,000 billboards across the country. Whatever gets art in front of people can only be a good thing.
Oh wow. I have been thinking of exactly the same idea. To that end, I just started playing around with Raspberry PI to see if it can work out. Looking online, seems they also have color E-Ink available which should make the cost even less.
About a decade ago I had a 24x7 linux based fileserver / LDAP / NFS / mp3 jukebox / misc box available at home which had nothing plugged into the VGA out... so I installed "zgv" (which is still available) because it is a console mode graphics viewer which can do slideshows. So I didn't have to bother with all of X on what was fundamentally a home fileserver. I had a very simple shell script to clean out a directory, wget pictures from all over the net (I had the local wx radar, and street scene webcams in Ireland, all kinds of stuff like that) and dump all the downloaded files (including 404 errors and the like) into the directory. Then I ran each graphic file thru a processor mostly so it would eat 404 errors and failed downloads and the like so they disappear rather than mess up the slideshow also to resize to the proper res. Then zgv in slideshow mode would display each pic for X seconds, and do it Y times, such that it took about 15 minutes to run, or maybe it was a half hour. Then rinse and repeat forever. Even with some abstraction and file renaming to force the order in the slideshow, we're talking about a "two screenful" bash script, it wasn't much.
The analog VGA output was fed into a gadget that converted certain VGA resolutions into composite video (This is why I was using imagemagick filters to resize the images, my converter didn't work well at certain SVGA compatible resolutions which "zgv" would use..) That composite signal via some modulators went all over the house. There's a lot more to that story. I basically had a crude cable TV plant in my house. A handful of highpass/lowpass filters and some cheap composite to NTSC modulators costs less than you'd think.
If I had to do it over again I'd probably steer toward X windows for the graphics, I'd bother to actually figure out how to auto-start the system rather than log in by hand at each (rare) reboot to run the script (probably outta inittab, errr.. systemd I guess). Given modern screensavers and the like it might amount to just boot up GDM/KDM/somethingDM and let a script update the screensaver directory of pictures... I have not kept up with modern FOSS developments WRT digital picture frames, the whole software setup might just be an "apt-get" away now. Or if not, it should be. Some double buffering so I could download and process the next set of "slides" such that the transition would be smooth and instantaneous when it updates, would be nice, and probably not too hard.
Color eink is not really available. I have a small BW eink shield and vaguely postage stamp sized display for an arduino. The price was unpleasant. I thought it humorous that to show the durability and no-power required of the e-ink they ship it displaying some Chinese characters rather than blank. At this time I think we're stuck with LCDs although Amazon, with its special history and relationship with e-ink could probably sell the worlds first actually shipping color e-ink digital picture frame. Which is my suspicion about the whole "amazon art" thing.
I want a "huge" picture frame. Not a little commercially available thing or even a hacked up laptop. So I'm probably stuck with TVs/Monitors (not much difference anymore) for now.
If you come across e-ink prices for TV-sized formats (e.g., 30-60" diagonals), let me know. At the right price, I think there are a lot of interesting things that could be done.
And huge lag on updates - not fussy. I'm thinking about wirelessly controlled A-frames outside businesses advertising specials that are updated by phone.
Or a wall-mounted household calendar, understandable at a glance. Or black and white business metrics.
I just don't think it's a very good way to browse for art. That said, if you know specifically what you want, it's a pretty good way to connect with galleries.