Cultural Digital newsletter #99
Cultural Digital
Hello again
I'm back! Big thanks to Gavin Mallory, Ben Templeton, and Sam Scott Wood for keeping things ticking over while I've been off doing other things.
I've got a big backlog of things to post, but I reckon we should start with a pretty musical thing. You know I can't resist those.
Dot Piano is "a visual musical instrument that lives on the web. Use your computer keys or MIDI keyboard to record a song, then share it simply by sending a link. Made by Alex Chen and Yotam Mann". Apparently there's a physical version of this in the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum.
I really don't want to turn this into the Google Newsletter, but it seems they've been very busy lately:
English Heritage are now on Google Arts & Culture in a big way.
Ways of Curating is an interactive journey of the exhibitions by Hans Ulrich Obrist. From Obrist, Google Cultural Institute and ForYourArt.
XY-Fi comes from their Arts & Culture Experiments and allows you to "mouse-over the physical world, with your phone". You may remember this was used for a British Museum exhibition a little while back.
Pixel Records is a fictional AI record label and a collaboration between Boiler Room and Google Pixel 2. "Powered by Google Magenta’s AI algorithms and your own vocal waveforms, it’s an experiment that asks can machines create compelling artistic content?" Answers on a postcard.
On the subject of music and AI, Break Free by Taryn Southern is an example of a track where the music and the video were created using artificial intelligence (but not the lyrics or vocals). Specifically, the music came from Amper Music.
Oh, and there's a talk about this sort of thing tonight in London. Music in the age of artificial creation is part of the Being Human festival. If you hurry…
Virtual musical instrument museum launches with 20,000 items from British collections. It's called MINIM-UK and the project was led by the Royal College of Music.
The Newest Home for Rembrandt and the Dutch Masters Is Gorgeous Outer-Space Museum (Thanks to Virtual Reality). Great headline. This relates to a new thing from The Kremer Collection. "Various pop-up events will bring the museum to more audiences soon, with details to be announced. In early 2018, the creators will release an app that will allow anyone with a Google Daydream-ready smartphone and a VR mask to experience the collection".
A New Social Media Presence at the Royal Ontario Museum. Talking through some of the changes they're making. "We didn’t just make this decision on a gut feeling, these changing habits were reflected in our data. We could tell from the day-to-day management of our accounts that a shift was taking place but the data analysis confirmed our assumptions that our world had totally flipped on its head".
Building a free and unrestricted digital museum and library. From Tom Scott at the Wellcome Collection. "In this paper, I discuss the history of Wellcome Collection, Wellcome’s museum and library, and the challenges such a collection presents when trying to design and build a free and unrestricted digital space where people can engage, be inspired and explore the connections between science, medicine, life and art".
The Importance of Having a CRM Strategy. "The Globe needed a CRM system to enable them to better manage and analyse audience data across departments and an insightful segmentation system that would give them the understanding required to develop and maximise their audience relationships".
Museum + Heritage Advisor are doing a free webinar on the GDPR and Cultural Heritage Organisations. That's be on 30 November 2017.
MCNx London looks like being the first in a new programme of local events from the Museum Computer Network. That'll be on 19 February 2018.
Drip is essentially Kickstarter's version of Patreon.
Museums and Digital Culture popped up last week and promises "Stories of the Museums and Digital Culture (MS) program at Pratt Institute". Probably worth a follow.
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at the Royal Academy of Arts, Squint Opera, Arvon Foundation, Jewish Museum, Battersea Arts Centre, Fevered Sleep, and the V&A.
And that'll do us for now.
Thanks for reading and please do share the good stuff around if you see fit. I'll catch you again next week.
Chris Unitt
The Library is a treasure trove of arts/digital info and it launches next week (or sooner). So this is your last chance to jump on the big pre-launch discount.
Find out more about The Library.