Cultural Digital newsletter #95
Cultural Digital
Hello
This week there's Spotify, strategy, sprints, and SEO. Plus dance, gifs, machine learning, and crowdfunding. So the usual mixed bag, then.
The Cleveland Museum of Art reopened their fancy ARTLENS Gallery. Here's what it looks like.
A Competitive Analysis that Saved $337,000. This is an SEO case study looking at improving search traffic to broadwaydirect.com. If you want to really go behind the scenes, they've also made the Trello board for this project public, although I'm not sure if that was deliberate. Ah well.
Get fit with The Royal Ballet’s new exercise video series. As I think I've said before, the ROH YouTube account is really well put together. This is their new series.
Using sprints for incremental improvements. How ACMI designed a calendar for their website.
A digital strategy for Wellcome Collection. "we are now looking to make a step change in how people engage with Wellcome Collection and how we deliver those digital services: seeking to apply the culture, practices and technologies of the internet era to respond to people’s raised expectations".
The Connection of Museums, Technology, and Entrepreneurship. An interview with CultureConnect CEO Samantha Diamond.
The complexity of visual elements in digital connections. More from The Barnes, this time on their online collections. "As a refresher, we’re using computer vision to power visual similarity and to determine when works of art have similar formal elements. By doing so, we hope to provide a way to “see” these elements online in the same way Dr. Barnes taught people to engage with works of art in his galleries".
Gettin' giffy with it. Waddesdon Manor invited in Adam Koszary "gif-maker and social media extraordinaire to show us how to make gifs from images of our collection objects".
A digital season: Scottish Ballet. "Christopher Hampson, our CEO and Artistic Director, set out to create a month-long programme of dance for a digital format, opening the organisation, dancers and choreographers to new ways of working, new technologies and new collaborations".
Spotify’s Discover Weekly: How machine learning finds your new music. This is a relatively accessible explanation.
A couple of articles on the (current) limits of AI. Why A.I. Is Just Not Funny. "Although A.I. robots can pick up on jokes, they have a lot to learn about telling them". And Why Google’s AI Can Write Beautiful Songs but Still Can’t Tell a Joke. "Douglas Eck of Google’s Magenta project talks about how machine learning can help artists make professional-sounding (if meandering) music".
Using matched crowdfunding to tap into more than money. A report from Nesta on a pilot that not only brought in some cash but also "our research uncovered the impact of matched crowdfunding on the non-financial benefits it brings to projects".
The British Library is racing to save archived sounds from decay. "Will Prentice is trying to save the British Library's archive of 6.5 million sound recordings – before it's lost forever to decay and dead hardware".
The Inspection Chamber from BBC R&D and Rosina Sound is "an original interactive audio drama pilot for voice devices".
Claire Ridge at the Centre for Dance Research. "In this project I am exploring the potential of looping in a performance practice. This includes looping as copying, recording, remediating and creating technological loops through live feed, recorded film and bodies in performance".
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available over at Artful Jobs.
Thanks very much for reading. I'm actually not going to be about the next couple of weeks, but I'll be leaving you in some very capable hands.
Catch you again soon
Chris Unitt
PS. Another little update on The Library. More people have signed up than expected, so thanks if you've done that. I've also written something explaining what it's all about.
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.