Chris Unitt

Links for March 2013

Chris Unitt -

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?

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:

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:

Otherwise:

Apps, services, etc

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”.