Cultural Digital newsletter #56
Cultural Digital
Hello
Back on schedule this week, and we've got unpopular opinions, art memes, and some entertaining ridiculousness.
But first! I'm keen to know what you think about this newsletter so I've put together a really quick survey. Please take 2mins to give me a bit of feedback. Thanks!
Now then, check this out…
That's Worlds in Worlds by Goro Fujita. I'll just copy what he's said about it…
"Here is another Quill piece I created over the course of 4 days. I call it "Worlds in Worlds". When Inigo Quilez created Quill, he claimed that it would have an infinite canvas....
Now what happens if you give an artist an infinite canvas? Of course he is going to use it right? I had to put it to the test. What if there was a world within a world within a world within a world...."
Links
Danny Birchall's 100 unpopular opinions about museums has some thoughts on digital-related stuff (but not exclusively).
After my pondering-out-loud last week, I discovered that the Nerdwriter does YouTube video essays about art (and other things). Here's The Death of Socrates: How To Read A Painting. Any others out there doing similar?
Which reminds me. Canvas - the £1.8m YouTube experiment funded by Arts Council England. How's that going? I think the initial investment was over 3 years, after which it'd be self-funding, so it'll have just passed the halfway mark by now.
The website for the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts is shutting this month. It'll be archived by the National Archives apparently. I'd have thought CultureHive would be a good place for it (the PDF guides at least).
Chris McCrudden has made some silly tweets to celebrate #Artmeme day (his words, not mine).
The Royal Court has got into the podcast game with the Playwright's Podcast, apparently inspired by the likes of The Comedian's Comedian (which I very much like).
VocalEyes have released their State of Museum Access Report 2016. The finding that "27% of UK museums provide no access information on their website for disabled visitors planning a visit" is grim. To help matters, they've also released the Museum Access Information Guidelines 2016 (PDF) which provides some very straightforward guidance. Really good stuff.
The Art of Mapping Art has some examples of organisations using leaflet.js, swapping map tiles for image tiles to "quickly create an impressive interactive image viewer". Examples come from Europeana Labs, The Rijksmuseum, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, and The Getty.
First UK arts organisations adopt ‘.art’ domain. I've got no beef with domains like this, but I do take issue with the amount of stupidity on display in this quote: “For us, and for our galleries, ‘.com’ is too commercial and ‘.fr’ is too generic. The problem with most domain names is that they don’t say anything about the business that you do, ‘.art’ solves that.” That from an organisation moving (and I'm not making this up) from www.sna-france.com to www.sna.art.
New website
Dalemain Mansion & Historic Gardens
Jobs
There aren't many digital-related jobs up for grabs on artfuljobs.com right now.
Thanks for reading. As ever, anyone who shares this with friends and colleagues will hold a special place in my heart (here's a useful link).
Also, here's one last link to that quick little feedback survey.
Chris Unitt
@chrisunitt
I work with lots of really good cultural organisations on projects involving digital analytics and user research. Visit One Further for more on that.