Cultural Digital - the best of 2017
Cultural Digital
Hello and welcome to 2018!
To get us back into the swing of things, here are the most popular links from every Cultural Digital email of 2017.
It turns out you like:
people sharing their strategies and in-depth behind the scenes pieces
people messing about with images
anything I'm ever so slightly rude about (which happens so rarely)
It's a long email, so you may need to head to the web version to see the whole thing. And I've copied the text from the original email (lightly edited for sense) but haven't checked that all the links are still working, so apologies if anything has since disappeared.
So with no further ado, here are the top Cultural Digital links of 2017…
OUTLINES by Tundra.
National Portrait Gallery Digital Strategy (PDF). Commissioned by the gallery, written by Oliver Vickers-Harris, with input from various others, and now published publicly for your enjoyment.
The Independent Cinema office on 10 ways data can change the way you run your cinema. Although you really don't need a cinema to get something from this.
I've written about how to check if you've hooked up Spektrix and Google Analytics properly. There's even a handy dashboard you can download.
Using digital platforms for deeper and richer engagement with arts audiences. CultureCase, in case you don't already know about it, puts academic research into a more easily digestible format for people working in/around the cultural sector. For example, "Overall, the research found that those who might gain most from engaging with the platform were those least likely to use it".
This is from @thisjenlewis "The Metropolitan Museum has given the public free access to 375,000 images so naturally I am planning to face-swap all of them". And so @artfaceswaps was born.
Christopher Hesse has made an interactive image translation demo that uses pix2pix-tensorflow.
Youtube arts network reviews ‘unrealistic’ ambitions. Oh dear.
"What happens when you "visualize" data with sound?" A fine question, and one that Listen To Data is excellently placed to answer.
Digital at the Museum: Important, really? Distinctive, how? Part of a series of articles from Alex Morrison about digital strategy and museums.
My talk at Ticketing Professionals – APIs. Ash Mann talked about ticketing APIs - what they are, the current state of them, and where things could/should go.
How Shakespeare’s Globe used proximity marketing to increase ticket sales
WeMake an Artbot from Derby Museums is brilliant. That's all I need to say about this one.
Evidence review: The adoption of digital technology in the arts This was commissioned by Nesta and is well worth a read, drawing together lots of different threads to give an overview of how tech is being and could be used.
Historic GIFs wot I did. Adam Koszary says "I spent just over a year at the Bodleian being sassy on social media and making GIFs out of centuries-old collections". Click the link for pleasing daftness.
Sides from the Royal Academy of Arts' Digital Content Strategy, Lightning talk (PDF). They won a very well-deserved award for the work they've done around that strategy.
An Introduction to IIIF from Tom Crane at Digirati.
Olly Gibbs went to a museum "armed with Face App to brighten up a lot of the sombre looks on the paintings and sculptures".
When Wrong Goes Right: 30 Creative Museum 404 Error Pages. I always think it's odd that the one place institutions feel it's ok to add some 'personality' to their websites is also the one place you don't want your users to find themselves. Also, some of these are terrible (coughcooperhewittcough) with more thought put into being 'creative' than being helpful. As you can probably tell, I could go on.
The National Archives - Digital Strategy - March 2017.
"This digital strategy sets out an ambitious plan over the next three years to deliver the aims in Archives Inspire. To do this we plan to:
create the disruptive digital archive
extend our reach and engaging new audiences using the web
transform how the physical archive is accessed and used
develop our digital capability, skills and culture
forge partnerships with other archives progressing digital transformation"
What do the best museum websites all do? Cogapp have "analysed 24 museum websites to distill the three groups of questions you need to answer for your visitors". Although the post actually reads more like 'we came up with what we think a good museum website should do, then looked at how 24 museums go about doing those things'. Which is fine, and it all seems pretty sensible. Although I'd question the 'best museum websites' bit though - at least one of the sites featured is awful.
Everyone's doing drip email courses on their websites these days as a way of getting people to part with their contact details. Someone's now gone and made a platform for them. Here are art courses on Highbrow (other topics are available).
Chris Rodley used deep learning to cross a book of dinosaurs with a book of flowers. He also did it with 19th century engravings of fruit. This sort of stuff still blows my mind.
MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE is a weekly mailing list looking at the future of music, media & tech.
Hackney Empire have been working with Hawk-Eye (yep, the one from Wimbledon and other sporting events) on a proof of concept to deliver cheaper digital recording in arts venues.
Museums and Digital Strategy Today. The speakers on the panel at the 2017 Museums and the Web Conference with their "key takeaways from the discussions and helpful reference materials for those of you who are wrestling with digital strategy inside your own museums".
Putting the fun in funnel analysis. Ash Mann has been comparing conversion rates of the checkout pathways offered by some of the main ticketing providers. "The worst performing system had an average conversion rate of under 3% on mobile whereas the best was converting mobile traffic at an average rate of over 25%. This is a huge difference".
Making Contact: Digital experiments with visitor donations. Yet more lovely, detailed project documentation shared by National Museums Scotland.
Exploring how to order a museum’s digital collections. From Chris Pearson at the V&A "How would you categorise a museum’s collections, so that users can find what they want? ‘Average’, ‘Fair’, ‘Good’ and ‘OK’? It’s safe to say this suggestion from our remote user testing didn’t make it to our final list of categories. Here’s how we went about rethinking our online collections page".
British Museum first to showcase interactive display with wifi link. So this has "an interactive display controlled through a dedicated wifi link within the gallery". I'm not quite sure I totally get how this works, but I'm sure it's marvellous. You'll not be surprised to learn that Google have been involved in this BM project too.
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".
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".
A well-planned approach: Digital content & social media at HOME, Manchester. Sarah Leech describes how they do their thing.
Why don’t nonprofit sites convert? "What goes wrong is that nonprofit stakeholders are so passionate about their mission — a passion that only deepens, the longer they work there — that they design an experience which reflects their passion for the mission, instead of one which maps to a member’s mental model". To massively over-generalise, I think websites in the cultural end of the nonprofit world tend to hit this issue when they start talking about their education and fundraising work.
What is the future of digital in the arts? An interview with Chris Unitt. Yeah, that's me. One of the questions in this was "What are some common mistakes that arts and cultural organisations often make with digital?" There's plenty to pick from, but I went with "underinvestment, both in terms of people and infrastructure".
Some thoughts on the new Science Museum website from their Digital Director, John Stack.
Cultural organisations: how much should you spend on your website? Specifically maintenance, not rebuilds. The poll asked for hypothetical annual spend as a % of revenue (which isn't perfect, but then what is?). The numbers came in rather higher than I'd have expected, although if respondents were factoring in staff time, commissioned content (words, pictures, videos), and other sundry costs it's maybe not so far off.
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.
Let’s Fund Teams Not Projects.
Tate + HTC Vive.
There’s probably not much more to lose in terms of organic reach on Facebook, as this piece from The Drum on how many people actually see your digital content shows. Spoiler: email kills Facebook, but Snapchat is where it’s at (if you’re not doing SMS, which still feels a bit icky to me).
English Heritage are now on Google Arts & Culture in a big way.
How Generative Music Works is a presentation by Tero Parviainen and it is great. I mean, just so good.
Exhibitions online is a new thing from Bristol Culture. "A place to translate our in-house exhibitions for an online audience".
The Michelangelo of Microsoft Excel. This is pretty impressive but also quite sweet. "When Tatsuo Horiuchi retired, he decided to try his hand at art. But instead of spending money on paints and brushes, Horiuchi used what he already had pre-installed on his computer—Microsoft Excel".
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".
And there we go. Lots of good stuff this year, and lots more to come in 2018.
Thanks for reading!
Chris Unitt
The Library launched in 2017. It's is a treasure trove of arts/digital info and even includes a spreadsheet with every link from this newsletter (for easier searching). Find out more about The Library.