Cultural Digital newsletter #89
Cultural Digital
Hello
Following an unscheduled break last week, we're back with online collections, international collaborations, music, something French, and a slightly creepy performance art thing.
I've mentioned Apple's ARKit a few times and so, in the interests of balance, here's Google's newly announced ARCore for Android. For an idea of the kind of thing that's possible, have a look at AR Experiments "a site that features work by coders who are experimenting with augmented reality in exciting ways".
Museums, show your collection some love. Nicole Reisenberger at The Phillips Collection did some testing and reckons that "many museums would benefit from investigating how well their website navigation is directing users to their collection pages, and perhaps showing those collections some love by giving them a new name". Worth noting that the lesson here isn't 'stop using the word 'collection' on your site' but 'do some testing'.
IIIF Showcase: Digital Collections in Dialogue. Speaking of giving collections some love, this is at the V&A on 2 November and will be a chance to hear from "developers and adopters of IIIF to explain its background and growing community".
#SunflowersLive. "Five masterpieces on three continents united on Facebook". This happened a few weeks back and was a live broadcast hopping between curators at five different museums.
10 Museums in 10 Days? A Chinese Start-Up (Virtually) Gives Children a Tour. "Children from more than 180,000 Chinese households are on a virtual tour this week of 10 famous museums. The two-hour daily broadcasts combine slick animations, clips from Chinese presenters’ recent trips to the museums and live-streamed commentary from Chinese academics in a Shanghai studio".
V&A Technical Lead on how tech can create "beauty and emotion". An interview with Duncan Gough about his explorations with bots, digital art furniture, and coming to a museum from a background in startups "it's challenging and rewarding in equal parts. Museum tech is fun and weird".
LAUREN is a performance piece riffing on Alexa, Google Home, and the like. "The three day performance begins with Lauren physically visiting your home and installing a collection of networked device objects, including cameras, sensors, outlets, faucets, door locks, lights, and other electronic devices. She will discuss with you what you hope to get from LAUREN".
“Hamlet on the Holodeck,” Twenty Years Later. Looking back at Janet H. Murray's book about digital narrative. "Depending on how generous you want to be, you could say that she predicted the constructive pleasures of Minecraft, the frustrations of Apple’s Siri, and the social story-worlds of massive multi-player online role-playing games".
Amazon Has Developed an AI Fashion Designer. "An Amazon team at Lab126, a research center based in San Francisco, has developed an algorithm that learns about a particular style of fashion from images, and can then generate new items in similar styles from scratch—essentially, a simple AI fashion designer".
The Music Startup Meltdown. "A quick glance at the 2013 MIDEM “30 music startups to watch” list reveals many have met a sad fate — 18 of the 30 no longer seem to exist at all. Others still have a web presence but haven’t posted anything new in years, or are zombie startups running out the clock, or never even launched".
Radiotopia’s First ‘Showcase’ series: ‘Ways of Hearing’. This is "a six-part podcast hosted by musician Damon Krukowski, exploring the nature of listening in our digital world". Episode 1 had a definite 'analogue good, digital not so good' bias, but still.
"Amazing Together": Mason Bates, Classical Music, and Neoliberal Values. This is a lengthy one, but it's about how art is being tugged towards the competitive marketplace, and the role of technology in that process.
Télés et radios publiques appelées à plus collaborer. "France Télévisions et Radio France vont lancer une « grande plate-forme numérique d’offre culturelle »". Which could be worth keeping an eye out for.
Culture24's next Let's Get Real project will look at "the social value of digital technologies for museums". If that's of interest, they're consulting on it at the moment.
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at Art UK, 64 Million artists, National Museums Scotland, Sheffield Museums, and the Institute of Art and Ideas.
Thanks for reading. There'll be more next week. In the meantime, please share the good stuff in any way you see fit.
Cheers
Chris Unitt
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.