#188 - Inescapable
Hello
This week, lots of discussion about doing things digital, some AI stuff, and a nice bit of Dvořák.
Above Below Beyond is "artist Jamie Holman's response to a 10 month project working young people across East Durham. This website leaves behind a creative legacy, allowing people to descend the 'mineshaft' and make music with the lost sounds of the miners and the new sounds of electronic music". I made a right racket with this.
Reimagining
All the web's a stage » Witness Performance. "Maybe traditional performing arts could learn a lot from YouTube vloggers and online games".
A glimpse into the technological masterpiece of Tomorrowland Around The World. This happened over the weekend and sounds like it involved an incredible amount of work. You can watch snippets of the acts on YouTube to get a feel for it.
How Indie Theaters Are Reimagining The Moviegoing Experience. "art house theaters and independent movie distributors are cultivating virtual viewings for their audiences".
Software Developers Look to Offer Virtual Hajj as a Viable Alternative for Pilgrims "The iUmrah.World app lets users find and pay for proxies in Saudi Arabia […] The proxies live stream their journeys and the tasks they complete in Mecca to iUmrah customers".
Digital Paris Men’s Fashion Week: The Vogue Verdict | British Vogue
"The main message from Paris’s first digital Men’s Fashion Week? Designers can’t wait to get back to the runway". Sounds familiar.
AI
AI in relation to GLAMs | Europeana Pro "The proposed TF will focus on AI techniques used in the analysis and enrichment of digital collections resulting in improved search and browsing functionalities for the users".
A.I. Art Valuation Is the Market's Holy Grail. Here Are 7 Reasons Why It's Harder Than It Sounds. "From data bias to information opacity, there are a lot of reasons why it's going to take a while for A.I. to predict the value of your art".
This AI can discover the hidden links between great works of art. "The researchers created MosAIc, an algorithm that looks for links that humans wouldn't have thought of".
The Art in the Artificial. Nesta on "the implications of AI for the creative industries and how we should respond".
Miscellaneous
Security Incident | Blackbaud "In May of 2020, we discovered and stopped a ransomware attack". Ouch. You may well have been getting (or sending?) emails about this.
Is the creative industry equipped to work with emerging technologies? "What became increasingly clear in our survey is a skills gap. A want and need to learn more about emerging technologies is there, but creative companies lean on specialist outsources rather than investing in developing these skills in-house".
Visualising cultural heritage collections: Is the data enough? – Olivia Vane. "This talk will explore what we can expect from visualising cultural data, walking through a series of timeline visualisation projects with different cultural heritage institutions".
How Flash games shaped the video game industry. "Flash is dead. But the influence of Flash games on modern gameplay is inescapable".
Recreating Wildlife Photographer of the Year online – part 1 – Introduction and technical approach "I’ll start by setting the scene for how the project came about and then dive into some of the technical decisions". Clearleft's case study goes into some depth too.
Digitisation and the Alexandra Palace/Google Arts & Culture partnership. I nearly wrote this off as a bit of standard PR, but it's an interesting little story about the discovery of a lost archive and a serendipitous conversation at a tech-focused Women in Business event.
Culture of Comfort - find comfort in culture with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. It's Yo-Yo Ma playing the Hovis theme song while talking over a Google Street View-style tour of the Large Hadron Collider.
Digital Jobs
There are digital-related jobs going at the Paul Mellon Centre, BFI, Woolwich Works, and more.
Thanks for reading and if you know anyone else who's into this sort of thing then please forward this on to them.
Chris Unitt
Coach. Digital training for culture pros.
In August there's a training session on Writing for the Web and a free Cultural Digital Catch-Up session.