Why the Australia Council doesn’t get digital culture...

Just had to share...following on from Marcus Westbury's article in The Age...here's an even better one Marcus pointed the way to. Ben Eltham...you are my new hero.

Was the Australia Concil’s abolition of the New Media Arts Board the single worst decision by an Australian cultural agency of the last decade? It’s certainly beginning to look that way.

Re-rite or how to make the most of your orchestra...

I haven't had a chance to really have a look at the 'Re-rite' program, but it had me at the clever pun, and a post by Stephen Smoliar

re-rite is a new experiment by the British Philharmonia Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. It tries to confront the problem that most concert-goers not only are passive but also lack any sense of how they can actively engage through listening. re-rite tries to solve this problem by turning a recorded performance into an activity space.

Here's a bit more...

re-rite, the Philharmonia Orchestra's Digital Residency, will allow members of the public to conduct, play and step inside the Philharmonia Orchestra with Esa-Pekka Salonen through audio and video projections of musicians performing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

Opening to the public at the Bargehouse on London’s South Bank on Tuesday 3 November, the project will show every section of the Orchestra performing The Rite of Spring simultaneously ‘as live’ throughout a four-storey warehouse building. The public will able to sit amongst the horn players, perform in the percussion section and take up the baton and control sections of the Orchestra as they play.

Stephen does a great job of summarising it and linking through to other articles...all I'm going to add is when can we do this with the AOBO?

Image source: http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/re-rite/

Revealing the Arts - Day 2

Well the sessions appeared to sizzle today, we at least from the outside. There were a few flames that caught my fancy along the way.

Bag out the major institutions...

There were a few taunts from the twitter stream about 'us' well funded major performing arts companies and 'our' emergence from the dark ages...speaking the truth?

socialinterior I find this event very focused on the major performing arts and the issues they are having catching up on where everyone else is at #rtarts

A wonderful profound comment from one user about the resistance to open up to new media had me hoping to use a new favourite phrase...

artsdigitalera RT @The_Art_Life: New media world collides with old world art politics of entitlement.#RTArts

Ahhhh the 'politics of entitlement' that would make a wonderful PhD chapter I'm sure.

Whose Right is it anyway?

It seems rights management was a huge issue...I won't pull out some of the quotable quotes but again, here is us (them?) squabbling about who owns and who profits when all audiences want to do is engage? Surely everyone can see that?

Lessons Learned?

But the big fun of the day was some of the er, comments that heated up the Twitterverse when the Aussie Cosi presentation began. A summary of the presentation can be found here.

Snarky comments...there were a few...

socialinterior The Australian Opera discovers social networks#rtarts

commuter_dirge @aussiecosi has 88 following, 54 followers, and 91 tweets. Hardly a roaring success...#RTArts

commuter_dirge twitalyzer score for @aussiecosi:http://tr.im/Db2n: "0.3 influence" "0.0% generosity" "0.7% clout" (now I'm just being mean) #RTArts

unsungsongs . @commuter_dirge and 66 facebook firends. That's a #fail surely?#RTArts

commuter_dirge @fireinthesouth well, that's you're brand, just as@AussieCosi is a branded account. It's really not a great case study. #RTArts

unsungsongs I am extremely curious about whether those involved in Aussie Cosi see it as a success and how they judge that?#rtarts

mattriviera @aussiecosi What did you learn thru social media feedback you couldn't have gotten thru a survey? Best use of social media? #RTArts

mattriviera @aussiecosi Wouldn't a good way for fan community to engage with the work be for them to appropriate it? To re-interpret it? #RTArts

shoes_off @elliottbledsoe @commuter_dirge true, but showcasing a more active community than cosi would have displayed the scalability of SM #rtarts

commuter_dirge @bimyou_bimyou I'm not talking monetising twitter in and of itself. but you need to show some proof of it working & a correllation #RTArts

dziga @aussiecosi doesn't seem to have a lot of followers #rtarts

revealingarts Katrina Sedgwick: "Messing", "playing", "getting in there", these are the kind of mind frame to approach digital, not "sell tickets" #RTArts

Snarky yes... but justifiably snarky...I leave that to you dear readers. What struck me about the response to the session and the overall experience of watching this conference unfold online was a clear realisation that you can't wait and then be forced into a situation where you have to play catch up. There is nothing wrong with experimentation...and sometimes, that in itself is the way forward until strategy catches up..."Messing", "playing", "getting in there"... I can't wait.

Revealing the Arts

As I sit down today to get back into the swing of essay work about the impacts of digital and new media on museums, across town (well down the street, really) our National Broadcaster and the overseer of our cultural institutions are likewise engaged in conversation about just that.

Are you wondering what’s happening to arts and culture in the new digital world? Where will the money come from? How will we manage rights? Where do we find creative partners? What works and what doesn’t? And what are we leaving the next generation? The Australia Council for the Arts and the ABC invite you to be part of a selected group of strategic thinkers, artists, practitioners and directors who will uncover the opportunities for the arts that the digital era presents.

Today and tomorrow, the ABC and the Australia Council are hosting 'Revealing the Arts: creative conversations and solutions for the digital era'. The program of discussion appears to be covering the current and future role of digital across areas such as a education and opening up access to arts, while tackling 'issues' such as copyright, rights management and commercial opportunities in the digital era.

One thing that has struck me is the inclusion of OA's Chief Executive among the speakers list in a presentation with David Ford on Aussie Cosi entitled 'SHOW ME HOW - Revealing the Creative Opportunities'. As a small initiative that may or may not have reached it's strategic aim (bums on seats? access? sorry was there a strategic aim?) it will indeed be interesting to hear what is said about this project.

The ABC is providing live streaming of the event on both days, so there's no excuse not to watch. You can also follow the blog or the twitter stream (see cultural caretakers can interact with digital media! my bad).

Of perhaps most interest to me is the last session entitled 'Where to from here'. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow we might all know (we can dream can't we?).

And if you need anymore proof it's one to watch, here's another great article in The Age this morning from Marcus Westbury. Marcus takes a slightly different tack and for me, one who has watched a large cultural institution grapple with the impact of the digital...I would say....right on!

there are vital basic assumptions that are rarely questioned: that the culture, the cultural organisations that deliver it, the cultural needs and infrastructure of Australia will remain more or less fixed. Technology is merely about the marketing, the branding, the language, the revenue and the education programs. The idea that the culture itself is changing and evolving is rarely considered. Technology merely changes the hype and the pitch to keep the kids interested.

The ABC has long moved beyond that. The broadcaster has realised that in order to justify its continued existence, it needs to keep questioning and evolving its roles.

I would love to (but I won't) comment on how just the opposite to the ABC approach where a lack of innovation (fostered by a lack of strategic thinking and not helped by having no budget for experimentation) seems to be one of the many blockages at the arts organisation I know intimately.

Well lets just hope that some of those attendees from the large cultural institutions are paying attention over the next few days.

Image source: http://revealingthearts.com/blog/

Google as an arts organisation

Found through a post by Tim Roberts on Admit 2.0 which was in turn, Tim tells us, passed to him by Vicki Allpress Hill from a presenter she met at the recent Tessitura Conference...aka an example of the wonderful world of people pass on great things...as Tim did I'm posing this in full.

Erik Gensler of Capacity Interactive Inc.

Google is governed by the following: openness, sharing, aggregation and capturing customer data. The more customer data you have the more you learn and the more you can improve. So inspired by Jeff Jarvis' book What Would Google Do?, I thought about the following: If Google were a performing arts organization it would...

...aggregate all critical reviews and share them to help people decide if they want to attend a performance

...survey ticket buyers after each performance and send them to a forum where they could comment on performances they've seen

...allow people to vote on future rep

...put all production designs on line for people to examine and comment upon

...have 100% flexible exchange policies

...video and share rehearsals and other behind-the-scenes footage

...promote all other arts organizations

...encourage all management and artistic leadership to blog

Is your organization doing any of these things?

Why not?

Ozco Marketing Summit 2009 videos

I was lucky enough to be substituted into this event on the closing day. Again I found this an inspiring summit to be part of, in particular my writing hand was very busy during the digital media presentations. In case you missed this, the videos are now available. I'm definitely going back to see those I missed such as 'Communicating with the 50+ audience' and the update from the 'ADVICE' program, and I might even relive Donna Williams' inspiring key notespeech from Day Two, there's an audience development hero for you!

Find all the videos here: http://vimeo.com/user1014372

Wiki world....Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy v1.0

Great idea, both using a wiki format and putting this info out there for the world. It is nice to an institution state openly that they don't have all the answers, and seeking interaction and outside opinion in planning. Can't wait to see how it plays out.

Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy v1.0

'We've just posted Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy, Version 1.0. The strategy talks about an updated digital experience, a new learning model that helps people with their "lifelong learning journeys," and the creation of a Smithsonian Commons—a new part of our digital presence dedicated to stimulating learning, creation, and innovation through open access to Smithsonian research, collections and communities.

This strategy was created through a fast and transparent process that included workshops, the Smithsonian 2.0 conference, Twitter, YouTube, and ongoing collaboration through this wiki. It's a work in progress, and we welcome your comments, questions, and input, via the Smithsonian 2.0 blog or through any discussion tab on this wiki site. This strategy will feed into the Smithsonian’s comprehensive strategic plan, currently under development.'