Cultural Digital #212
Laptop creativity, tech partnerships, SEO and more
Hello
Conference season is in full swing. I’ll be at the Museum Computer Group Conference next week. They’ve got a really varied line-up and there should be a few tickets left if you’re quick (plus a livestream option). Maybe I’ll see you there.
For now though, here’s some link-based cultural tech interestingness.
Karen X on Instagram with a filter that uses Open AI’s DALL-E to expand famous paintings that you can then go inside.
And here’s a follow-up showing how it was made. Her actual website is a rabbit hole that’s well worth diving into.
Laptop creativity
I’ve listened to a couple of things recently where musicians have happened to mention how laptops have enabled people to create in new environments.
Vespertine - Sonic Symbolism. Bjork’s album-by-album podcast is fascinating anyway. Here she talks about her laptop freeing her from the studio.
Fred again.. on Apple Music. Where he mentions that one of his tracks was created at Tate Modern.
Beat This - Four Tet. This isn’t new, but feels like it fits. It’s a series where producers were given 10 minutes to whip up a track.
Tech/culture partnerships
Instagram and Brooklyn Museum Debut 2022 #BlackVisionaries Program With $650,000 in Grants. Plus "With the support of Meta Open Arts, we’re also awarding five $30,000 Emerging Visionary Grants for individuals focused on art and design based in the U.S.".
Pinterest Advances Video Content Approach via Partnership with The Louvre "which will enable users to experience the historic art gallery via video elements within the app".
Burberry x Minecraft. A collaboration which is “an in-game adventure, capsule collection and real-world experiences, each filled with creativity, exploration and self-expression”.
Silicon Valley’s plutocrats are shaking up culture in the region. From The Economist. “As well as funding local artists, tech titans have underwritten a new museum”.
SEO
There have been a bunch of pieces written about search engine optimisation recently. It was featured in the recent Cultural Content Report, but then it was also highlighted in Culture24’s first Let’s Get Real report back in 2011.
How to: blogging for museums. Joe Vaughan from Reading Museums. “I’ll introduce and unpack search engine optimisation (SEO)—what it is and how it benefits organisations’ online engagement”.
SEO in the cultural sector. Cog Design with a comprehensive piece on SEO, sprinkled with some cultural sector specifics.
SEO for theatres and museums. A pair of articles from One Further looking at how theatres and museums might approach SEO.
Other
Shutterstock will sell AI-generated art and 'compensate' human artists. An interesting move, and not one that's been universally popular.
Digital Inter/Section is "an EU-funded, international project focused on finding new market opportunities and developing new business models for cultural institutions in the digital arts field". If you're at such an organisation then they have a survey to fill out.
Digitization And Data Management In Museums. From Dr Anne Luther. "The goal of this blog text is to familiarize museum staff who are using and producing data with current standards, competences, literature and use cases".
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See you soon