A couple of starting points this month. Firstly, ‘Assembly’ is an installation by Kimchi and Chips. There’s a fuller description of it on the Creative Applications Network but, for the purposes of this blog, here’s a video:
Meanwhile, Leila Johnston’s post about Making Things Fast was quite rightly tweeted like billy-o. It’s worth reading in full and even though I shouldn’t really pull an excerpt from it, I will:
dreams are just a mind-altering drug to divert us from grim body-shovelling reality. However you look at it, making things come true involves making. So are you making, today? Or are you dreaming about next year?
Arts/digital links
From a Nina Simon post called Ancient Greece 2.0: Arts Participation before the Industrial Age:
If arts managers fear bloggers today, imagine how they would have felt back in the good old days when the audience was yelling and throwing things at the stage
A couple of posts that go well together:
- The Artist’s Lens: What It Means to See the World With an Eye Toward a Facebook Update; and
- How Social Media Turns Creative Pursuits Into ‘Live’ Performances
If those two posts are about digital media making us more aware of how we’re perceived by others encountering us virtually, When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide: ‘People Staring at Computers’ is (amongst many other things) about how we present ourselves in physical space while we’re doing that:
There was no expression on my face. Even though I spend most of my day talking to and collaborating with other people online, from my face you can see no trace of this. I thought about Paul Ekman developing his Facial Action Coding System in the 60s, and discovering that “expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system“
Assorted bits and pieces:
- Some interesting notes from Juno Rae who went to the Joint DLNET and MCG Conference: Engaging Digital Audiences in Museums
- Speaking of museums, if I’m not mistaken then Museums on Tumblr: Best Practices is from Tumblr themselves.
- From ACE, an Arts Digital R&D podcast series. You could probably make an arts and culture radio schedule from podcasts put out by various organisations. Hmm…
- This Exquisite Forest is a new Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin thing, with Google and Tate Modern involved too.
- A conversation with an orchestra website is one of those xtranormal things from the guy behind properdiscord.com
- How Twitter transformed dance has some good perspective from the perspective of the dancers. This point is well made: “Historically, the discipline of a dancer’s working life has kept them relatively isolated within the studio or theatre. Now, it’s the potential for forging contacts outside that draws so many to the web”
I loved this post about simulating outcomes for interactive stories using Logic.ly – a tool for teaching logic gates and circuits. Clever. I like it when people find unexpected uses for things. On a similar theme, see Experimental Turk and, slightly different again, an utterly wonderful post from Robin Sloan titled Summer Reading… and Programming. I really don’t know where to start with that last one.
Other links
I’ve been thinking about online fundraising recently. It’s worth mentioning this list list of top fundraising websites (top content marketing there by the guys and gals at Pancreatic Cancer UK) and also Mobilise, which is a mobile regular donation and communication system and well worth checking out.
I mentioned a load of online learning sites in an earlier post but it’d be remiss of me to not also point out this post that speculates that In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop. It starts with universities and goes on to cover coffee shops, retail and offfices.
The Wallaby Card looks like a great idea if you use credit cards (which I don’t). The idea is you consolidate all your various credit card details on one card and you use that to maximise cash back rebates, merchant discounts and frequent traveller rewards. Only available in the USA at the moment, as are Mint and Manilla, dammit.
Yet more Kickstarter stuff (with a UK launch coming soon):
- Kickstarter Fulfillment and Product Development: A story of Dogfood and Data Validation is a great post by Fred Benenson showing how they test the tools they build. It’s also just interesting to see what can be required to handle Kickstarter reward shipping
- Finally, a project I’m excited about getting behind: 99% Invisible: Season 3
I’ve been looking at approaches to digital analytics frameworks this month (invite me to your next dinner party, I double dare you) and have been finding all sorts, most if it utter dross. I won’t dump all of those links here but the GDS design principles are, typically from that lot, very good and clear in relation to transactional public services. I also came across #SMMStandards, a “cross-industry effort to simplify and unify the measurement of social media”.
When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you’re a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin’ down MasterCard. But there’s no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I’m mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.
Although he should probably be careful what he wishes for – for a short while there almost was a look.
Apps, services, etc
- Web: ShareNow, TigerText, Cue, Readlists, News.me, Meetings.io, Scalar
- Mac: InVision, YoruFukurou, CrashPlan, Tweetbot for Mac, Read Later, CheatSheet
- iOS: Chirp, Shuffler.fm, Stitcher, BBC Olympics
Finally…
It’s only right to finish with this all-conquering short film from Dice Productions. It was written by Ian, who I work with, and I’ve followed with interest as it’s toured the world picking up awards at festivals all over the place. The film’s now available to watch online so please, enjoy All Consuming Love (Man In A Cat):