Cultural Digital newsletter #139
Cultural Digital
Hello
This week there are some new things, plus some bits and bobs I've had hanging around for ages. See if you can tell the difference.
Also PLEASE FILL OUT THIS QUICK SURVEY. I'm thinking of making some changes to this newsletter, and a bit of extra info would be useful.
artport is "the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet art and an online gallery space for commissions of net art and new media art". It's been around since 2001, but I only just discovered it via The Laughing Snake, which is "Morehshin Allahyari's hypertext narrative The Laughing Snake uses the myth of a jinn—a supernatural creature or monstrous figure in Arabian mythology—to explore the status of women and the female body in the Middle East".
Museums
Maria Elena Colombo's interviews on digital museum matters with people like Merete Sanderhoff (National Gallery of Denmark), Chiara Bernasconi (MoMA), and Patricia Buffa (Fondation Louis Vitton).
Occupy White Walls on Steam. I was bombarded with so many ads for this thing that I finally took a look at it. "The idea is that every player curates their own gallery, and earns in-game money to expand their collection based on how many visitors they get". Rock Paper Shotgun say that "To say it’s a PC sandbox-building, AI-driven MMO where people play with Art, developed by folks who really love architecture and abstract characters… would be a bit of a mouthful". Which is certainly true.
Marketing for Museums – Everything you need to know about marketing your museum online. "We're creating a set of tools (an online course, resources, and a series of interviews with museum marketing professionals) which will cover everything you need to know about marketing your museum".
Music
Jamillah Knowles was at MusicTechFest and saw this beatbox-controlled light show, in a reactor lab in Stockholm.
The Philharmonia Orchestra to bring free Virtual Reality experience to London in September. It's sold out, but sounds like quite a thing. "Inside a seven-metre custom-built space, audiences of up to six at a time will begin ‘seated’ in the heart of the Orchestra, right in front of conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and take a journey all the way to outer space whilst the Orchestra’s full-bodied sound will be replicated by the circular 18-speaker array".
Phantom Islands — A Sonic Atlas is a bit tricky to describe. Phantom islands are bits of land whose existence has never been verified, and this interactive map lets you listen to them. Or rather "hear their musical, biophonic and geophonic soundscapes".
What Makes a Hit. "In their paper “What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music,” professors Michael Mauskapf of Columbia Business School and Noah Askin of INSEAD analyzed 60 years worth of tracks from the Billboard Hot 100, and found that the songs that chart highest tend to be less similar to their predecessors. When it comes to getting to the top of the charts, it pays to be different — though not too different".
16 Years Late, $13B Short, but Optimistic: Where Growth Will Take the Music Biz. "Sixteen years after the music industry's peak, revenues have returned to growth. But the core problems of streaming service profitability and minuscule artist royalties persist. There is cause for optimism, but transformation is needed. Enter, Spotify Records and Apple Music Group?". I was bored of 'death of the music biz' articles many years ago, but I found this interesting.
Miscellaneous
Culture Briefs is a "weekly email of the latest freelance and consultant opportunities, invitations to tender and briefs in the arts, heritage and culture sectors". It's really good.
BuzzFeed Sets Instagram Drama 'Romeo Likes Juliet'. "On Oct. 9, the company will unveil an eight-day retelling of Romeo and Juliet that will play out live on people's Instagram feeds. The project, dubbed Romeo Likes Juliet, will make use of seven character profiles on Instagram to tell a story across photo posts, comments, Instagram Stories and longform video platform IGTV". Sounds familiar…
Buried by the Ash of Vesuvius, These Scrolls Are Being Read for the First Time in Millennia. "A revolutionary American scientist is using subatomic physics to decipher 2,000-year-old texts from the early days of Western civilization".
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at the Crafts Council, British Museum, and more.
That's a wrap. Thanks for reading, please share stuff around, and I'll catch you again next time.
Oh, and please don't forget the survey.
Chris Unitt
The Library is a treasure trove of arts/digital info. It's just been updated with new websites, suppliers, and job descriptions. Find out more about The Library.