Cultural Digital newsletter #61 - technology changing art
Cultural Digital
Hello
This week there's been a lot of pontificating on what art even, y'know… is. Or is going to because of technology. Even the events section is getting in on the act.
There's also data, domain names, DDoS-ing, and detectives.
Here's What Happens When Dancing Meets Creative Coders. A write-up from DanceHackDay which resulted in "18 compelling two-minute performances using both familiar and emerging new media tools, like full-body motion tracking, livestreamed 360-degree video, projection mapping, machine learning, virtual reality, and repurposed biometric data".
A generated music video based on extracted poses from still images is Mario Klingermann's latest. "In this first attempt no pre-selection has been done on only picking “good” dance poses, but apart from a few outliers I think this already is quite entertaining".
More on tech changing art:
BBC Radio 4 - FutureProofing, Art explores "the impact that technological change will have on art, and speak to artists at the forefront of the digital revolution".
Algorave: The live coding movement that makes next-level electronic music
And from 2014, 7 Ways Technology is Changing How Art is Made
In Fractal, art is a weapon "While the player paints their way through the world, shielding themselves from enemies with the digital art painted in the process, a level’s end beholds an interesting sight: a digitally-tangible visual representation of their progress to that point. All through the floaty brush strokes swiped through the digital air".
What Does It Mean to Curate GIFs? On the Artsy podcast "GIPHY’s community curator Ari Spool joins us to break down the process of curating artist-created GIFs. We ask: Is there a key to going viral? What do GIFs allow us to express that words might not? And how do these online images fit into centuries of fine art?"
Also from Artsy, How the Fight to Own .Art Illustrates the Art World’s Inherent Contradictions
An interview with Kevin Safford, Lead Data Scientist at Umbel about the value of data to live event producers.
The Independent Cinema office on 10 ways data can change the way you run your cinema. Although you really don't need a cinema to get something from this.
In less savoury film news, Sundance's box office was temporarily knocked offline last week.
I don't know if you've come across Art Detective before, but the sleuthery on display here struck me as being really quite something.
New websites
Oxford Playhouse, Pitlochry Festival Theatre.
Jobs
There's a digital-related job up for grabs at The National Archives.
Events
They're all exhibitions this week:
From 7 Jan, Beyond Boundaries: Art By Email at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
From 25 Jan, Transcending Boundaries at Pace Gallery, London
From 26 Jan, Sleep Mode, the Art of the Screensaver at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam
Thanks as ever for reading (unless this is your first one of these, in which case, welcome). Please do pass it on to others if you think that's the right thing to do.
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.