Cultural Digital newsletter #88
Cultural Digital
Hello
This week there's a little kerfuffle and lots of labs. We may as well get on with it…
James Rauff's Recirculation Art "creates poetic and humanistic portrayals of roboticized cameras, depicting life after their decline".
There's been some kerfuffle about Arts Council England awarding a large wodge of cash to Wise Children, a brand new theatre company. That's resulted in the company releasing their funding application. Whatever the merits/otherwise of this, I thought the section headed Digital Wise Children on p14 was worth flagging. Especially this bit…
"Instead of separating digital from other communication departments, Marketing and Fundraising, Wise Children will employ a Digital Producer (Audiences and Fundraising). Wise Children’s Digital Producer will develop online artworks to engage new audiences, share creative content from shows and raise funds for shows directly from Wise Children’s audiences. They will generate and amplify an active conversation with Wise Children’s audience".
Artnome is the blog of Jason Bailey "an art nerd building the world's largest analytical database of known works across our most important artists. Think Zillow / Moneyball for art and artists". The article Moneyball for Art (and Pollock's tallest painting) is worth a read.
3D object scans as a museum learning resource. From the Science Museum Group Digital Lab on the development of a pilot website with 3D object scans for use in the classroom. "We’re currently conducting an evaluation to investigate the potential applications for the resource. This is what we’ve learned so far from the process of creating the scans and from an initial research phase with teachers".
An audio experiment: Aardman podcast More labs! Shelley Matulick at ACMI says "I've painted a pretty negative and honest picture" but it's not really - this is another good post from the team there.
M+ Labs is the latest addition to the 'labs' projects around various museums. This one features "Experiments from inside the new museum for visual culture in Hong Kong". Their first post, Towards Open Access at M+ – M+ Labs, is a statement of intent "Opening up the M+ Collection is a keystone to what we’re planning to do digitally. Our goal is to unlock the museum’s institutional knowledge into the public domain, driven by M+’s mission as a public institution. Here’s what we want to do".
#MCN50 Voices "We are facilitating interviews with 50 people from the MCN community about their careers, their experience with the museum technology field, the skills that have been key to success, and the skills that will be key to success in the future". The MCN being the Museum Computer Network.
Documentation – Arts . Access . Datathon This event happened in Los Angeles back in April, and now… "We are delighted to share the final report and toolkit on the datathon".
Musetech: An Ideal Syllabus "What key skills do we need to drive digital transformation in our cultural institutions today?" Your thoughts are requested.
Maker of ‘iTrump’ Trumpet App Silences Trump in Trademark Fight. Good for him.
Google Developers Blog: Hamilton App Takes the Stage. A tech-y breakdown of the app build for those of you that know your Firebases and Flutters.
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at the Royal Academy of Arts, London Philharmonic Orchestra, National Gallery, Young Vic, and Sheffield Museums.
And that'll do us for another week. Thanks for sticking to the end and please pass on anything you think others should know about.
Cheers
Chris Unitt
When not writing emails like this, I run a digital analytics and user research consultancy called One Further and work for some amazing cultural organisations in the UK and abroad.