Take-homes from btween09 digital media forum, Liverpool

Just spent a great two days in Liverpool with a very interesting mix of creative types (entrepreneurs, developers, thinkers, social media start-ups, agencies and broadcasters) as part of the btween09 digital media forum. Well done to Katz Kiely and her team at just-b.

I was one of only a handful of people from the public cultural sector and probably one of the only people who doesn’t have the successful monetising of their offer at the heart of what drives their service. Not that I am saying that the task of justifying the spending of public money is not something that should be quantified and considered as ROI but that the mindset of being driven by a remit to promote learning and engagement for its own sake puts you in a different box to commercial companies.

For me there are a number of key take-homes and formation of early ideas.

1. I was struck by how clever commercial agencies are getting in their manipulation of social media. Ogilvy talked about Brands not just using social media, but being social. But the methods within this new marketing 2.0 seems sometimes counter intuitive in some ways to traditional marketing methods. For example, you don’t talk about yourself within networks, you talk about other people or you support networking and ideas shaping events such as this one in order to make sure you are on the right wave. I guess no one would be surprised to hear that I am deeply cynical about agencies in general and about this kind of clever intrusion into the heart of social networking but, as the revenue streams generated support the sector that I hold dear, I have to bite my tongue. Also, hats off to the people at Ogilvy who are seriously smart (love the brainZ internal problem solving solution, read a post from the people that built it here). I would love to see this kind of intelligence applied to arts, heritage and education!

2. Charles Leadbeater’s analysis of the switch between traditional media and what he calls ‘mutual media’ is excellent. It’s a very clear visual image of the shift between mutual media as the moon orbiting around the huge sun of traditional media (the model of the past), and the future trajectory that he predicts will see the positions switch. He talked around many of the ideas present in his books, such as the breakdown of people activities into three categories – Enjoy, Talk, Do. You can get his essay with a lot of other good stuff in the recently published “After the Crunch” book by CCSkills and British Council here).

3. The three speakers from my session (Will Gompertz, Peter Buckingham and me) were presenting and discussing the issues faced by different aspects of cultural sector as funded by three different government funded agencies – Film Council, MLA and Arts Council – three different organisations but all clearly arriving at the same place at the same point in time with regard to the potential of digital services to transform user engagement. All looking for the holy grail of what this should mean in terms of policy development. But the really cool bit was that Leadbeaters introduction couldn’t have provided a better platform or introduction to the issues we were discussing. It was not planned, it was just all true. True and very reassuring that our observations and thoughts about what is possible and the value of real collaboration put us on the right track, Very comforting when weighing up the price of all the blood, sweat and tears or trying to get people to see the links between all these things.

4. It was really inspiring to see FACT thriving as a venue and as an organisation. Looking really good with projects like FACT TV and Abandon Normal Devices. They were contemporaries to the organisation I used to run before Culture24 called Lighthouse, who roots came out of the independent film and video workshop initiatives in the 80’s and who have both blossomed through the careful and clear advocacy of the role of creative activities and industries in economic development and reform at a local level. The original key player in FACT, Eddie Burg, is now at the Southbank and soon to join the Culture24 board. Very nice and looking forward to working with him.

5. I have learned that five and a half hours on a bus that was sold to you as a techbus, but actually lacked much actual ‘tech’, not really enough beer and a huge traffic jam, can actually be really fun if you are travelling with a group of truly free minds (thanks to Alfie Dennen and Adam Gee for the stories). Charlie Leadbeater called the people who are pushing to find the meaning of the new digital spaces (socially and culturally) “pirates and renegades”. I say ‘yes’ to that.

Check out the little blue buy who blows bubbles when you tweet!

Hidden Message Found in Lincoln Pocket Watch

On Tuesday 10th March, in a small conference room on the first floor of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, officials decided to find out if the story was true about the secret message supposedly inside Lincoln’s pocket watch.

This is a really great story worth a read here

You can see all the pictures on the Museums Flickr site here.

Altermodern at Tate Britain; badges, global culture and all of us

Above my desk is a poster that says “all artists are cowards”, it is an exhibition poster for an artist called Bob and Roberta Smith and every time I look at it I smile.

Bob and Roberta Smith are one of the many new rising talents who have been chosen by Nicholas Bourriaud to be part of the Altermodern exhibition at Tate Britain. The conceit of the show is based on his naming what he sees as the next movement in contemporary art that replaces post-modernism. A post-post-modernism, that encompasses the global, networked, intercultural existence many of us now live in and some of us are immersed in.

The show is funny, clever, curious and encapsulates something about the 21st century that has a real resonance. The wall paintings in Franz Ackermann’s installation are like looking at a networked digital space from the inside. They seem to map some strangely familiar visualisation of online spaces and the cyber journeying that takes us between digital information and its interactions.

This idea of the (alter)modern journey comes also into Walead Beshty installation of Fedex boxes. These large glass cubes that bear the marks of their travels between the artist and a variety of destinations, are like the scars of environmental damage or the dangers of too much travelling on the human soul. The corners are cracked, the glass is broken and they seem sad, lost and rather beautiful.

Loris Greaud installation (wires attached to boxes that resonate and vibrate the physical architecture of the room in time to flashing blue lights) seems to take you deep inside his head. But unlike the Ackermann paintings that seem to portray an internal digital space in a very public domain, this work takes you into the very intimate personal space of the artist’s own thoughts and brain waves.

Bob and Roberta Smith is adding a new piece of work to the show each week. It’s creation starts with a conversation with the curator at 11am on a Monday morning which is then developed to becomes a new work to be placed somewhere in the gallery. Each new piece stays insitu for a week before being moved to a public storage area – a kind of art lost property area – where each piece can be moved aside. Each of the works possesses the same humour and cut-the-crap satire that I have come to know and love from my office poster. One expresses the regret “ I wish I would have voted for Barack Obama’ another simply states next to its found object sculpture consisting of a trumpet and megaphone ‘I was up all night making this’.

There is a lot more worth seeing – the quietly breathtaking moonscapes by Darren Almond, Simon Starling’s replica desks that encapsulate the loss of detail and signal that comes over distances. You need at least two hours to do the show justice, of which at least 20 minutes is needed to watch Lindsay Seers ‘quasi-documentary’ about her own life as an artist and the impact that not speaking until she was eight had on her artistic development. In particular her time spend as both a human camera and projector. I left her projection space totally unsure if any of it was true but full of big questions about the nature of communication and seeing both inside and outside of us.

You can also for an extra 65p buy a badge and be your very own Bob and Roberta Smith. I did and am.

Ocarina iPhone app by Smule and exploding interface design

My iPhone has shifted into a new space with the download of a very cool little application, that is simultaneously totally useless and completely wonderful.

The ‘ocarina’ app developed by smule allow me to play my phone. To quote their website:

“Ocarina is sensitive to your breath, touch and movements, making it even more versatile than the original. Unlike other musical applications, there are no pre-compiled riffs so musicians will find unlimited opportunities for self-expression. Advanced options allow you to choose between diatonic, minor and harmonic scales. Or channel your favorite video game adventurer with Smule’s Zeldarian mode.”

This is rather groovy and all good fun but the bit that I like the best is the interface to view the music of other iPhone players around the world, which are geocoded and visualized onto a rotating image of our planet. The effect is magical and reminds you of how small our world is, how insignificant our individual voices but yet how meaningful to us as human beings.

This kind of visualisation of data that is being collected for ‘other’ reasons is I believe the start of something big. Exploding interface design is the thing that will finally transform the way technology can touch our lives in unexpected ways. This kind of mash-up thingy, useless exploration, is on the right track.

If you have an iPhone, I suggest you try it and look at the user generated sheet music that you can play.

It is called Ocarina as the sound is like the real world instrument, as in the picture below.

Poet Andrew Motion to chair MLA

What great news, Poet Laureate and Professor of Creative Writing Andrew Motion has been selected to be the new chair for the new MLA (Museum, Library and Archive Council)

This has got to be a good thing that signifies a recognition of the need for the organisation to more closer to the kind of innovation, passion and creativity that is the domain of those who create and curate.

He says Bout himself on his website “I see myself as a town crier, can-opener and flag-waver for poetry as well as wanting to write poems about various events that seem suitable to me”

He was appointed Poet Laureate in May 1999 and has done a lot to raise awareness of poetry through school and festival visits and improve assess to work online through the The Poetry Archive which he co-founded – a web-based collection of poets reading their work.

“Part of my interpretation of the role is to demystify it and prove that no matter how sophisticated the language, poetry latches on to very primitive human pleasures of reflection and association – which we forget as we grow older at our peril.”

His appointment comes at the same time as Culture Minister Margaret Hodge announces plans to strengthen DCMS engagement in regional policy through a new, simplified and improved way of working.

This basically means (finally) “For the first time, the Department’s four key agencies in the regions – Arts Council England, Sport England, English Heritage and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council – will have a duty to work together to jointly deliver a core set of shared priorities across the culture and sport agenda.”

I feel certain that Andrew appointment, and the fact that he was previously a member of Arts Council England and Chair of the ACE Literature Panel, will be a great help in making sure this new shared agenda and duty has any hope of being a reality.

Well done MLA.

Public Sector Broadcasting? Arts Council consult for Ofcom

When you hear the words public sector broadcasting you tend to think of the BBC and when you read the current consultation document prepared by Ofcom to generate debate and collect advice about where to go next with their regulations, you would be hard pressed the think of a lot else.

The document still expresses the debate within the terms of reference of the traditional broadcaster. It is all about inspiring and stimulating, there is little talk about actual participation, interactivity or collaboration – the kind of stuff that defines the way people actually use online technologies today.

I was not the only one at the meeting (which was filled mostly with other publicly funded media agencies, publishers and content holders) who felt that the old school broadcast language and tone of the document was symptomatic of the fact that they are basically missing the point of the online revolution and changing user behaviour.

If I were at art school now I would be writing my dissertation on the death of TV. Even the BBC has broken their own mould with the launch of the iplayer. I wonder who still only watches programmes within the TV schedule that just simply can’t get their head around their remote control (my mum basically)? Broadband is not the issue it was ten years ago and the wide scale take up has changed the UK media consultation habits forever.

The key question now is what are the new models for public sector publishers (I think publishing is a more appropriate work then broadcasting) that can encompass this change? They may broadcast but they will also need to aggregate, broker, listen, add value, provide context, host, distribute and mediate.

The possible answer to this question seems to have preoccupied me as Culture24 tries to find a way to describe itself within these new terms of reference. Surely public sector broadcasting is about access to publicly funded stuff? So me, this means not just the interpretative arts documentaries of BBC4, or the contemporary arts shows on Channel4, but the Tate on YouTube, the V&A podcasts, digital artists sites, commuinity gaming, the British library online catalogue etc..

Surely museums, galleries, archives, artist workshops, libraries, science centres, heritage sites should all be part of what public sector broadcasting/publishing should encompass?

Lets hope that the Arts Council are able to feedback these thoughts to Ofcom and that they are willing to hear them.

These notes relate to the Public Service Broadcasting Review Seminar, run by the Arts Council Visual Art Department and held at the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool on the 2 June 2008. John Wyver chaired the meeting.

‘VoiceThread’ tool for group conversation

Voicethread is a useful, fun and simple tool for playing around with images, text and audio in ways to add and share meaning(s) with others.

They describe it as follows:

:A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) – and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

At the moment it is free and you can see it would be very useful for any of the educational style, participatory community/local history projects that museums do so well. Also, for teachers, museum educationalists or kids just playing around.

NDAP international conference, Taipei, Taiwan 2008

Taking part in a conference run by the National Digital Archives Programme in Taiwan. I have been working with them for several years as part of the Culturemondo project and it is great to finally to meet them in their home country.

The conference has a selection of some great speakers: Seb Chan, Jennifer Trant and others. Jennifer talked about the recent development within the Steve Museum project. They have built a Facebook widget that allows users to invite friends to tag art in facebook. It is a great little tool and maybe a new generation of widgets for an audience that love art or culture. You can read her blog on the conference and the sessions.

Seb talked about his really pioneering social tagging work at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. He is taking further the work he has done with his team to open up access to their online collections. What is really interesting here is that the site is constantly evolving as they analyse and consider what information the system is collecting from users and how they use the site. They use this data to scope plans for the way the site develops and are looking at ways now of automating the process of grouping tags into ‘who / what / when’ categories using Calais. It makes clear that value that can be gained from bringing data sets together to extract new meanings.

Other interesting speakers included Cassey Bisson talking about his project called Scriblio which is working with open source software and library catalogues.

The future for the Library – Library of Congress and Flickr?

Interesting report by UCL saying, as an article in the Times Higher Education puts it, “Researchers’ web use could make libraries redundant”

It certainly warns of the possibilities for the Internet to offer more choice to researchers, in more flexible ways then the physical library. But what a call to action this should be! The Libraries and archives are rich with content that can help in so many contexts – learning, research, exploration, serendipity, interrogation, story telling etc.

I love libraries, for me, they can be cultural spaces and at their best are as vital as the best galleries or museums. (I am lucky to live in Brighton whose library is beautiful and vital).

Maybe they could take a lesson from The Library of Congress in the US who have just done a fabulous project with Flickr. Described as “Your opportunity to contribute to describing the world’s public photo collections”.

What is interesting here is the historical imagery, that previously was hard to find, is made available to a huge existing online community. The photographic community within Flickr already engage in higher quality tagging and user generated content and Flickr already has a lot of ’similar’ contemporary content with which these historical images can be linked. This puts both sets of images into different contexts.

Of course, the other important part of the equation is that the Flickr’s API opens up interesting possibilities for combining the info into other projects or services. Innovation at its best.

Crystal ball gazing – Free Our Data

As part of the final session on Tuesday I was one of three speakers (the other two being David Anderson and Dan Snow) that each presented a short vision on the future of museums in 2020.

The audience then discussed the three options and voted. Here is the text of my presentation …

Imagine a world without access to culture. Who would want to live there?

Imagine an online world without access to cultural stuff? This is the future that we need to avoid.
This must not happen.

None of us want to see an online world that is totally dominated by online shopping, porn and gossip.
But that is what could happen if we are not careful. What can we do to make sure that this doesn’t happen? Well, the good news is, it is not about vast quantities of money. It’s about how we behave.
And its about something that we all learned how to do a long time ago at school – sharing

In the future, we are going to need to get better at sharing our stuff with other people. When I say stuff I mean your digital collections and objects – the images, the text, the resources, your podcasts, your videos, your archives, everything that can take a digital form.

It is your responsibility to make sure this stuff is present in that virtual world of the future where people can find it, engage with it, learn from it and use it in ways that have meaning to them.
The online world is changing all the time, there is no way that all museums are going to be able to keep up with that – and I don’t think you should all have to. Other people are busy doing that, who are better qualified and resourced. But what you do need to do, is make sure that your stuff is available digitally to plug in and mingle.

Mingle with the communities and people that are online. No matter where they are, or who they are, or what they are doing. But crucially, it also need to be available to the machines, the robots and spiders, the aggregators and search engines. If you like, these are the librarians, the shop keepers, the delivery vans, the gate keepers, lollipop ladies – you can think of them in lots of different ways – they are the guides to the enormous quantities of digital stuff online that is growing all the time.

And in the future, it will be even more important that your content knows how to talk to these machines.

Now, I want to share a couple of things with you.

Fact one – I love Museums.
I really do, I love the actual physical real places and I want you to be clear, that what I am talking about is NOT some sort of real vs virtual debate.

I’m not saying that we are going to mind meld with out computers and live in a 3D virtual reality version of our universe. I am talking about the opportunities that the online world offer that coexist alongside those of the physical.

Fact two – People are living in search engines.
Over 80% of users start their online activity in a search engine. The most popular sites, around the world right now, are either search related or communities. And I don’t think that is going to change in the future. But, what is going to change is how people search and how they use what they find in their online communities or in their own life.

Who could have imaged five years ago that there would be 10 million people publishing their own blogs? Or 40 million shared photographs on Flickr. Who could have imaged how things like You Tube have changed our viewing habits or the way that the ipod and itunes has changed the way the music industry makes its money?

And search is getting clever. By 2020 it will be really clever.
People talk about web 2.0, web 3.0 or the semantic web and no one really know exactly how it will all work. But they do know that it is vital how digital information is packaged and offered to machines.

It will need standards.
It will need to be structured
And it will need to be tagged with its meaning or meanings depending on who you are.

And for museums, it needs to be known to have the authority that it deserves – that it can be trusted.
In a way what you are going to have to do is get your data ready and then set it free. By doing that, you will be making sure that it is available to the machine of the future to meet and greet. To mash up, to interoperate with, reuse in other places and contexts.

Because if those clever search engines can find it and they know what it is, and where it is from, then they will be able to deliver it via whatever new services we will all be using in the future. The services that will form the new experience economy Will Hutton talked about. The services that will customise and personalise stuff for us.

And if the machines can find it then the users will be able to find it as well.

In a way, search engines are the digital equivalent of the original collectors of the past. People like Henry Welcome, John Soanes or Pitt Rivers. But the machines and robots or the future will be collecting digital meaning not physical objects.

So, we need to make sure that our cultural stuff is set free online and that it can be separated from the institutions own online presence.

This will require a culture change. A new way of thinking about a piece of digital data.

I’m not saying museums can’t and shouldn’t publish their own curated online experiences, or develop their own services. Of course they should. What I am talking about is making sure stuff gets seen, is picked up and used in the online world of the future.

The new services that will be online in 2020 we cannot imagine. In fact, I bet, our understanding of what online means will not even be the same. But whatever it is, we need to make sure that culture is part of it, and that will mean setting our data free.