Cultural Digital newsletter #77 - cheat/don't cheat
Cultural Digital
Hello
We've got virtual reality, digital strategy, music, and various other bits and pieces this week.
Starting with an interactive music video/game for Words Hurt, by Naive New Beaters,
The National Archives - Digital Strategy - March 2017.
"This digital strategy sets out an ambitious plan over the next three years to deliver the aims in Archives Inspire. To do this we plan to:
create the disruptive digital archive
extend our reach and engaging new audiences using the web
transform how the physical archive is accessed and used
develop our digital capability, skills and culture
forge partnerships with other archives progressing digital transformation"
Virtual Reality
How to put VR into Museums From Preloaded's Phil Stuart, "Fresh from VR World Congress, I wanted to write-up the talk we gave on creating compelling in-gallery VR which enhances visitor experience".
Zero Point VR was at the Barbican until yesterday (sorry) and was by choreographer and visual artist, Darren Johnston. "This Barbican co-commission fuses digital imagery produced by motion-sensing technology with meditative choreography, and a score by Canadian composer Tim Hecker".
Music
Branger_Briz have been "working with algorithms that can learn from hundreds of thousands of past songs, and use this learned knowledge to synthesize new music". And Google have announced NSynth: Neural Audio Synthesis "a novel approach to music synthesis designed to aid the creative process".
The Secret Hit-Making Power of the Spotify Playlist. "Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services have fundamentally changed how people listen to music. In the process, they’ve changed how artists and songs break".
Sound and Music are looking for someone to help with reviewing the current data and metadata in the British Music Collection and make recommendations for future developments.
Other stuff
The Independent Cinema Office have put out a load of (mostly very short) videos for teaching front of house staff the basics of sign language. Here's the YouTube playlist.
The Prix Ars Electronica winners have been announced.
IBM Watson powered an interactive museum guide for its launch in Brazil. It lets people "have conversations with work housed at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo Museum. “The Voice of Art” replaces pre-recorded audio guides with a Watson-powered program that gleans data from books, old newspapers, recent articles, biographies, interviews and the internet".
Millions of Objects at 14 Art Institutions to Be Digitized for Online Database. It's called PHAROS and there 14 institutions involved, including the Frick Collection (which is leading the project), Rome’s Bibliotheca Hertziana, the Courtauld Institute, Getty Research Institute, Paris’s Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, and the Yale Center for British Art.
New website
Buxton Opera House, Extrema Outdoor, QSO – Our Story, Your Story.
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at JW3, Cog Design, Tate, the V&A, Historic Royal Palaces, and English Heritage, .
Events
10-11 June 2017, online: Crafting Intangibles
13 June 2017, London: Createch 2017
Thanks everyone. Please pass on the bits you think are worth sharing or just go nuts and forward the whole darn email.
Cheers
Chris Unitt
@chrisunitt
When not writing emails like this, I run a digital analytics and user research consultancy called One Further, working with some truly excellent cultural organisations.