An experience of free content

Some great reading for today from the Powerhouse's Seb Chan on the museum giving away content for free. The main jist is that opening up content has enabled:

• better documentation on part of its collection - hey after all that's their job
• the ability to reach much wider audiences - hey that's another part of their mission!
• the development of new markets for commercial activities - the old promotion thingo!

Seb also briefly outlines some cost rationalisation that has been experienced through delivery of imagery online...I'm sold...are you?

Read the whole blog at Some clarifications on our experience with 'free' content'

If you haven't seen any of the Powerhouse's Flickr images sourced from their vast photographic collections have a look here. They are wonderful!

Racegoers at Warwick Farm racecourse

Sneaky MCA visit

So I found myself, er, let's call it 'between' meetings today. Too late to go back to the office, too early to meet others...stuck at Circular Quay. Hmmm, what to do, what to do...well the MCA seemed like a place to wile away an hour.

Now I should say I've never been a fan. 'Contemporary' or 'modern' art and me haven't always been the best of friends, I love some, I loathe others..and I'm not quite there with my own personal aesthetic experience...I'm into plastics and early modernism at the moment, the minute rarity and one a kind meets mass production and consumption. And I hate the venue. All plain walls and stairs. But pushing aside my dislike of the physical and the crazed temporal states of my mind. Spare hour = MCA.

I was surprised and will go back.

Wonderful silver gelatin photographs by Ricky Maynard depicting indigenous Australians...being a fan of photography I was in heaven. However it was the placement of Maynard's works with that of those whom inspired his series, which was, well the inspiring part. The journey of Maynard (and really any artist) was just as interesting for this audience member as the work itself.

Video art. How very underrated by me...but some were wonderful, others *can you see me doing that motion for the subject matter went completely over my head!*. But one of them in particular struck me, a video piece that the artist had based on a work by Caspar David Friedrich. It had me entranced.

So...what's the outtake...well engagement and learning resonates through the lens of the viewer's previous experiences

and memories. Yep. And I'm the walking embodiment.

Note to self - visit the MCA more.