#182 - Feverish diversity
Hello
This week… well, there's just a lot going on right now, isn't there?
The Tiny Box. Marcus John Henry Brown is a performance artist who uses business conferences as his stage. "I'm trying to see the opportunities but I'm at the phase where, at this point, I can only see what's been taken away from me". This video is him coming to terms with feeling restricted by his new medium (YouTube) and trusting in his artistic process to see him through to a more optimistic end.
Museums online - any good?
The rise of the virtual gallery tour: what works and what doesn’t (yet) "Clicking through to a page of thumbnails that simply link to hi-res artwork images doesn’t feel like an event. It would be an uninspiring implementation of a retail website […] let alone an interpretation of a live exhibition".
The art world has thrown itself into live broadcasts online—but are they any good? "the plethora of output has made clear that the digital resources of much of the art world are seriously underdeveloped".
Are there ways in which virtual exhibitions are better than real ones? "Go to the Closer to Van Eyck website, for example, and you can zoom in to examine the surface of his paintings as never before".
Has the digital museum finally come of age? "For all the feverish diversity of content now on offer, the digital platform is often facile, superficial, and undiscriminating".
Curating Online Exhibitions Via Rhizome "I’ll argue that online exhibition should be considered as a practice that is distinct from but connected to gallery exhibition, and that the performative, variable quality of born-digital culture is a key aspect of this distinctiveness"
Games/art
How 'Fortnite' Maps a Hollywood Future "digital representation of humans will become more real, "from a leading character in a game to a digital double for film, to a live-venue hologram, or the virtual Travis Scott that 27.7 million players experienced in Fortnite"
Animal Crossing Art Generator | Getty "With this tool you can fill your island with art and transform your home into a world-class art gallery. Create your own custom patterns featuring artwork from famous art collections around the world".
Own a Van Gogh … in Animal Crossing, with The Met's New Share Tool. "The Met's Digital Department has made the Museum's entire collection of more than 406,000 Open Access images easy to transport into your virtual homes and islands".
Immersive
Expanded Performance - Bristol & Bath Creative R&D "exploring audience behaviour; intelligent visual technology (eg. motion tracking); embodiment; immersion; narrative; storytelling, the promotion of emerging technologies and commissioning world-leading performance"
Sundance Institute Announces 2020 New Frontier Story Lab Fellows. "Six projects and artist teams have been selected for the 2020 Sundance Institute New Frontier Story Lab, which supports independent artists working at the cutting-edge convergence of film, art, media, live performance, and technology".
Helsinki's huge VR gig hints at the potential of virtual tourism. "Finland’s biggest online event – a gig by JVG – was ‘attended’ by over half a million but Helsinki has even more ambitious plans to become the virtual capital of the world".
We’re introducing: Remote Tourism! "Faroese locals will be equipped with a live video camera, allowing virtual visitors not only to see the views from an on-the-spot perspective, but also Control Where And How They Explore, by using their computer or phone keypad".
Miscellaneous
Digital Works Episode 006 - Chris Unitt (Live). Off the back of that blog post I wrote with questions about the cultural sector's pivot to digital, Ash got me on to his podcast to delve a bit deeper. I apologise in advance for using the word 'like' so much - I'm blaming tiredness.
Now Play This at Home: In Review "with our programming we frequently made the conscious choice to prioritise smaller audiences. This choice was directly motivated by two of our core principles, that of creating a festival that was interactive and one that fostered meaningful connections". This is a great write-up.
Manchester Camerata: exploring the future of orchestral music. "To move forward in this digital space, we must consider Barker’s 7 aspects of ‘liveness’ and how we might successfully incorporate these into our digital performances".
Prioritizing Image Descriptions and Digital Equity at Cooper Hewitt. "We had a simple premise: a group of staff would join the image description project; each week they would describe some images; and slowly, incrementally, we’d chip away at the 210,000-plus images". At their rate of 281 per week, this project should be finished in about (counts on figures and toes…) 14 years. And that's just one collection.
Citizen DJ. "Make music using the free-to-use audio and video materials from the Library of Congress".
Browse livestreams, recordings, and resources from cultural organisations
streams.culturaldigital.com
Thanks for reading and look after yourselves (and others).
Chris Unitt