#178 - Something to keep you amused
Cultural Digital
Hello
It's another quite big email this week. Sorry about that. We've got digital culture, openness, new features, and Billie Eilish.
In you're planning to self-isolate at any point over the next little while, you might want something to keep you amused for a while. Enter Jigsaw Explorer Puzzle Player. This post from Maps Mania explains how to make a jigsaw from any IIIF manifest URL.
This one uses an image of a micromosaic from the V&A's Gilbert Collection.
Digital Culture
The Digital Culture 2019 report is out. It’s "a study on the impact and use of technology in the arts and culture sector, from Arts Council England and Nesta". There’s been a bit of doom and gloom around some of the stats. I get the feeling some more context is needed in some cases. I haven’t got time to think about that right now so I’m grateful to these:
The Digital Culture 2019 Report. Alec Ward pulls out some stats and layers on some meaning
Our take on Digital Culture 2019. Kate from Supercool with some thoughts
Digital Culture survey: what we've learnt | Arts Council England "The apparent decline in digital expertise at senior levels is a concern to us and addressing this issue is of pressing importance".
Openness
Smithsonian Open Access "easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come”
Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain. "Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin generated and saved every possible melody to a hard drive, then turned it back around to the commons".
Sketchfab Launches Public Domain Dedication for 3D Cultural Heritage. "cultural organisations using Sketchfab can now dedicate their 3D scans and models to the Public Domain using the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)".
How they built it
Building Wellcome Collection’s new archival storage service. Alex Chan says: "In this post, I’m going to explain how we built the new service, and how we migrated our existing archive from our old storage provider".
A new digital map for the V&A. Product Manager Sarah Purssell quizzes Error, the agency brought on board to redevelop the map.
Inspiration—There's a Filter for That and More. The Art Institute of Chicago give a walkthrough of their new website search function.
Miscellaneous
Looking back on six years of cultural heritage tweeting. From Emma Stanford, talking about her time at the Bodleian.
Being a Product Manager at the Natural History Museum. Pippa Gittings on "key differences from the startup and tech company product manager roles that are so often talked about".
Billie Eilish Gets Interviewed By a Robot.
STEM From Dance. "Our students build their confidence through dance and create challenging, technology-infused performances – ultimately building the skills needed for a future in STEM".
'Fake diversity': Barnes & Noble cancels race-swapped classic covers. "The decision of which book covers to redesign was made using artificial intelligence to analyze the text from 100 of the most famous titles in western literature, searching the texts to “see if it omitted the ethnicity of primary characters”" Oh dear.
The Arc of the Screenplay. "A look at 20 of the most popular films and their similar five act story structure".
Jobs
There are digital-related jobs available at the Arts Marketing Association, Natural History Museum, Tate, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
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Chris Unitt