#169 - Generously sprinkled
Cultural Digital
Hello
This week we have some online collections stuff, boring Mona Lisa selfies, and singing toothbrushes.
Urban Dataism is "an ongoing project addressing the relationship of the modern man living in an urban environment and his own nature". Or pixel art IRL with bonus artspeak, depending on your view of these things.
Online collections
Digitizing Objects from Smithsonian's Enormous Collection! "How do you digitize something as enormous as the Space Shuttle Discovery or as fragile as Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit ... and why bother?"
SMK’s collection search levels up. "To realise its potential, an online collection should be generously sprinkled with connections".
Collecting in the Age of Digital Reproduction. An essay from Casey Reas, who invented the Processing programming language.
Archives, museums and libraries: breaking the metadata silos. Metadata interoperability raises its head again.
Calls
Call for proposals: From Access to Inclusion 2020; an Arts and Culture Summit. In Dublin next year.
Europeana Research Grants Programme - 2019 Call for Submissions. Looking for "proposals that address challenges and opportunities related to the reuse of cultural heritage data in research, or provide training to build up the digital capabilities of cultural heritage professionals involved in research projects".
Miscellaneous
National Gallery X is "a space for residencies and events where artists and creatives can explore experimental technologies as well as critical arts, humanities and social science research on culture and the (digital) creative industries". And harps.
Google Lens, Augmented Reality, and the Future of Learning. "Why take a boring selfie in front of the Mona Lisa when you can use AR to dive deep into it?"
Project Cornelia is a research project from the University of Leuven's History of Art Department. There's some interesting data and visualisation stuff going on there.
Brent Faiyaz broke the music industry taboo by showing us how much he makes and how. The bit about the Spotify data being used to plan tour dates, while not ground-breaking, was interesting.
Driving Business – The importance of a Great Website. The Association of Illustrators with a series on presenting portfolios online. It's the Squarespace partnership that I thought was interesting here.
Samsung and the British Museum Offer 35,000 School Pupils the Chance to Virtually Visit the Museum. "pupils can enjoy direct interaction with British Museum staff, as well as high-resolution digital assets such as 3D digital objects being shared with students". And in other Samsung news…
Samsung debuts first 'vertical stage'. "Designed for "instant sharing", Samsung intends its 30ft, three-storey stage to fit neatly into concertgoers' smartphone screens".
Spice Girls - Wannabe on 5 Electric Toothbrushes. Because this is/should be what this newsletter is all about.
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at National Museums Scotland, and other jobs besides.
Thanks and well done for making it to the end. Have a good week or two and I'll be back with more before you know it.
Chris Unitt