Cultural Digital #016 - happy faces
Cultural Digital
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Hello there
This week's email is a random mish-mash of all sorts of things. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Alice by Jae Hyun Yoo. Draw a picture in the box and it'll guess the emotion. It uses neural networks (doesn't everything these days?) and learns the more people use it.
Links
This is fancy, from National Geographic. Trajan's Column - Reading an Ancient Comic Strip.
An interesting piece about what MoMA are doing with Wikipedia. Taking the basic premise that "If MoMA wants people to understand and enjoy the art of our time — as our mission says we do — then we should contribute to Wikipedia, which is, for most people, the content website of first resort."
The Digital R&D Fund for the Arts have released a couple of factsheets breaking down the results of their recent survey. There's a dance one and a museums one. The latter is notable because it looks at museums in isolation, whereas the main report referred to heritage organisations (I know some people didn't like that).
An interview with the people at the Met Museum’s MediaLab about "what roles it plays spreading digital innovation throughout the museum. We talked about edible 3D objects and telepresence robots, cats, Minecraft, hip-hop, and the importance of digital innovation spaces within museums".
A couple of things straight outta Oxford. First up, The Future of Finding: Resource Discovery is a report examining "how users of the museums and libraries at the University of Oxford find the information they need, current practices among other institutions, and trends and possibilities for resource discovery in the future."
Also, the Hidden Museum Project, which is a project looking at "best practice for engaging visitors in gallery spaces using mobile devices."
Espace is a Europeana thing. They're running six pilots that are "focused on developing innovative applications that use digitized cultural heritage material in creative ways".
The article, Anatomy of a Hit: How Success Is Measured in Different Creative Fields is an interesting enough read, but the infographic is much better.
How Corporations Profit From Black Teens' Viral Content "Young creatives are using social media to shape the culture we consume. But what happens when they don’t own their work?"
Who is Eleni Haifa? Paul Mason on how the rise of information technology is transforming the way we think about human character. This essay was apparently "inspired by a workshop at the Young Vic Theatre, under its Director’s Program".
A couple of Twitter things
@5point9billion
The idea is that you follow this bot, tweet it the date of your birth, and then it lets you know how far you'd have travelled through the universe if you were in fact a beam of light. Explanation here.
A dreadful start (@wnd_go)
I think this choose-your-own-adventure thing was produced alongside/to advertise a book.
And with that, I'll bring things to an end. If you appreciate these newsletters then please pass this on to others.
Thanks!
Chris Unitt
@chrisunitt
I work with cultural organisations on projects that involve digital strategy, content and analytics. Visit One Further if you want to find out more. Or just ask me - you've got my email address, after all.