Links for March 2013
I’ve not seen the show before but I liked Portlandia’s take on conceptual art:
And who controls the global monopoly on those little cards?
Arts / digital links
Watershed in Bristol are ditching their monthly print brochure in favour of their website, email lists and social media, saying “we have finally reached the point where the brochure has become a luxury none of us can afford”. Not the first organisation to do this (although I can’t think of another venue) and maybe a few others will pluck up the courage to follow their lead.
The Arts Council/NESTA/AHRC have announced the first funded projects for the Digital R&D programme. Everything seems to be a variation on a location-based app/game using social streams and encouraging participation in the form of crowd/co-curation. Presumably they all have ambitions to be sustainable and reusable by other arts organisations, with some vague potential to lead to new revenue streams. Sigh.
The next Art of Digital London get-together will be all about Cultural APIs.
Presentations by MoMA, Tate and SMK at Social Media Week Copenhagen, discussing the art museum on social media. While we’re on the subject, Tate’s Elena Villaespesa has analysed how Twitter was used for communications, visitor interaction and audience research over the course of their Art in Action festival.
City of London Sinfonia using JustGiving for crowdfunding. I’ve not seen folks using it in that way much. The approach here seems a bit unclear though – it says the work’s been commissioned and it sounds like the tour’s already happening. So why is £6k needed. Also, ‘get crowd funding!’? That’s a CTA?
And some other stuff:
- The Museums Association is doing a survey into the use of digital technology by culture organisations in the UK.
- Why Artwork Should Be Open Sourced And Revisited. Lots of good stuff here, including some reasons why few people did anything with Radiohead’s House of Cards video/data and why data should be released all the same.
- GLAMkit is being relaunched as an open source web content platform for galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Basically opening up the code for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia’s website.
- Software Studies: Our guide for working with cultural data: organizing, cleaning, summarizing.
- Indie Theater Now calls itself “the digital theater library for the 21st century”. It’s an online plays repository.
Other links
A couple of good pieces from Dance/USA. The first is about San Francisco Ballet’s not inconsiderable merchandising operation which, across the Ballet Shop, online store and touring mini-shops, brought in $590,968 in 2012. That accounted for 2.7% of their revenue.
Then we have 2013: Reimagining the Post-Apocalypse Dance Company. Which might not be the best title, but still
In an attempt to define a single characteristic that will indicate whether or not a company will stand out from or keep pace with its peer group, one question arises above all the rest: Does the dance company create and distribute work beyond the live stage?
The point being that there’s a (weirdly unhurried) virtual/digital landgrab going on at the moment, with only a few international players involved. The author’s got a vested interest in pointing to the importance of live and filmed, art but I think it goes wider than that. I might write a bit more about this.
Speaking of things I intend to write about, there are a few reports that have come out recently but I’ve been busy and abroad, so they’re on the backburner. In that list:
- NESTA: Rise of the Datavores
- Arts Quarter: ACE Catalyst Arts Survey
- Anthony Lilley and Prof Paul Moore: Counting What Counts [PDF]
- Collections Trust: A digital benchmarking model for the arts and culture sector
Otherwise:
- Jeremiah Owyang’s put together a big list of the websites and services that allow you to rent and trade… well, everything.
- Salesforce has an offer for not-for-profits (including outside the US). I did not know that.
- Whatdoestheinternetthink.net is strangely addictive. How can people not like slippers?
Apps, services, etc
- Web: Google Analytics Solutions Gallery, Litmus, Quibb, Tag Assistant
- Chrome: Chime
- Mac: Bluestacks App Player, PiP 2
- iOS: Mailbox
Finally…
The following video contains, in the space of nine seconds, everything you need to know about fighting games.
If that leaves you none the wiser then you may well need the (much lengthier) accompanying article by Paul Miller, titled The Educated Gentleperson’s Fighting Game Primer. As he says: “you ought to know something about competitive fighting games as a matter of basic literacy”.