Cultural Digital newsletter #103
Cultural Digital
Hello
This edition might well be the last one of 2017 because, with any luck, you'll have better things to be doing over the next couple of weeks. We're ending the year with ticketing, digital collections, fancy new tech, and sundry other items.
Pixi is a 'digital organism' created by a Dutch artist collective called WERC. The video describing the project is rather nice.
I'm going to plug the Structuring for Digital Success survey again because I think it might be important. Please fill it out if you work at a cultural organisation. It won't take all that long and the results could be really useful (especially if you've ever suspected that your digital efforts are under-resourced).
Ticketing
Data Shows Barrier to Visitation Is Offsite Technology (Not Onsite Technology). Colleen Dilenschneider has written a series of articles about reaching new audiences. "Onsite technology (virtual reality and techy exhibits) sound cool, but data suggest that inadequate offsite technology (ticketing platforms and social media) is a primary reason why many people do not visit cultural organizations".
Performing Arts Ticket Buyer Media Usage Study. Capacity Interactive and WolfBrown have done some research to "better understand how buyers use digital tools like social media to access content online, such as news and entertainment, and how often they still use traditional routes".
Ticketing Systems’ Preparedness for GDPR. A series of articles from The Ticketing Institute on how ticketing systems are preparing for GDPR.
About ticket reseller certification. Google are clamping down on the bad people a bit. Related: the Freakonomics podcast covered the secondary ticket market.
Ad Grants policies updated. Speaking of AdWords, if you're on the Google AdGrants programme then chances are you'll need to make some changes to make sure your account is compliant. So that's January messed up already.
New-fangled shenanigans
NIPS Machine Learning for Creativity and Design. Luba Elliott has put together a collection of art, music and design using machine learning.
Artist in the Archive by Jer Thorp. Want a new podcast to listen to? "Join the Library of Congress’s Innovator-in-Residence Jer Thorp as he explores the 165 million items in the library’s collection and speaks with the librarians, archivist and technologists who try to make sense of it all".
Brummel the Cat goes 3D. "Perhaps the real question is not whether museums should allow visitors to turn their exhibits into 3D models, but where does this process of capture and recreation end "
Digital collections
Who Are the Users of The Met's Online Collection? "The aim of this work was to get a better understanding of our users and to define a roadmap to improve the user experience on this important area of the website".
Charting trends in digitisation of heritage collections: read the ENUMERATE Survey results. Current trends in digitisation of European heritage collections from Europeana.
Other things
The Camera As Platform. Says here that "after years of unrelenting progress, the mobile computing era is coming to an end. The paradigm that will replace it is coming into focus, and it has a name: Spatial computing".This one'a bit leftfield, but I thought it was interesting.
What Could the Net Neutrality Repeal Mean for the Art World?. "nobody really knows what the internet is going to look like under this net neutrality rollback". O…kay. Way to undercut your article in the first paragraph.
LandMarks 2017 "Using the stars to navigate, travel the land and experience a series of contemporary art projects in and around Canada's National Parks and Historic Sites". This is nice.
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at Wigmore Hall, Royal Museums Greenwich, Octagon Theatre, and Kew Gardens.
As I said, that's probably going to be it for this year. I'm thinking of doing a 'highlights of 2017' email but that'll depend on how much I get into the Christmas festivities.
So just in case, thanks for subscribing over the past year (or however long it's been, really). I hope it's been useful, have a good couple of weeks and I'll be back before you know it!
Chris Unitt
The Library is a treasure trove of arts/digital info. It even includes a spreadsheet with every link from this newsletter (for easier searching). Find out more about The Library.