Cultural Digital newsletter #107
Cultural Digital
Hello
This week there are exhibition apps, human vs machine approaches to digital collections, and a really frustrating bit of digital art.
In 1623, Xiang Shengmo made a scroll showing the forest near Mount Baiyue in eastern China. In 2018, the British Museum animated it, and it's really rather wonderful.
The development of Arts Council England's next 10 year strategy has started with an online conversation at aceconversation2018.ning.com.
The Arts and Digital Transformation. 10 key opportunities that digital brings to the Arts, as identified by Carter Digital. This maybe won't blow your socks off, but it's nicely articulated.
Happy 10th Anniversary, Flickr Commons!
Listening to the Crowd: Data Science to understand the British Museum visitors. "The Museum has recently set up a partnership with Trip Advisor, which gives us access to the reviews". From Taha Yasseri at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Enhancing digital collections with people and machines
LibCrowds is "a platform for hosting experimental crowdsourcing projects aimed at improving access to the diverse collections held at the British Library".
Live notes from 'Machine learning for enhancing cultural heritage collections' meetup. This is from a recent event at the Wellcome Collection.
Exhibition apps
ArtString is, or will be, an app to use in museums. It says here "visitors are also invited to follow ‘strings’ created by other users, remixing collections and placing the objects and artworks in new contexts". I also found these nice-looking explainer posters by Jan Bielecki but the text is a bit too small to read.
ArtPassport is another app. It shows you 360° images from exhibitions. It's not a great experience, but if they make it possible to actually move around and look at the artworks it could be interesting.
Other stuff
The Philharmonia has raised £610k to take The Virtual Orchestra to four places around the UK.
Oh My Gosh, It’s Covered in Rule 30s! This one's a bit out there, but I loved the enthusiasm. Ever wondered where the pattern on Cambridge North train station came from?
Permanent Redirect is a digital artwork by Donald Hanson, but good luck finding it. "Every time someone views the art it moves and becomes harder to find. Part of experiments in digital scarcity and internet impermanence".
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at the Science Museum Group, Natural History Museum, Tate, Tower Bridge, Snape Maltings, and King's Place.
Thanks for reading and please pass this email on to others who might find it useful. I'll be back again next week.
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.