iTate
Posted in Technology on 14. Apr, 2009
The Tate galleries have put over 400 video files on iTunes U for free.
The files are divided up into ’Talk & Discussions’, ’Courses. Workshops & Study Days’ and ’Tate Symposia’, so interviews, education and research.
I like this quote from techradar:
“In the world of new media nothing can be achieved alone; by working with exceptional companies such as Apple we can use the internet to help fulfil Tate’s mission to make art available to all.”
Apart from, you know, those without iTunes. Which I don’t so I can’t offer any more comments. Would be good if I could find those videos somewhere else without having to download a program I don’t want.
It’s interesting to see that the Tates are the first museums on iTunes U. The rest are universities.
Hi Pete,
I’m not sure I understand your concern with free museum videos served via a free software program.
iTunes isn’t free. For one, it’s a massive and bulky program that struggles to do the most simple things I want it to do.
Its also a bit too keen for ram the shop aspect down my throat.
I also don’t trust anything that peddles DRM.
I’m also refusing to install anything that forces me to install Quicktime. Don’t know if it still does. Did when I had it.
I use foobar2000 for all my music management. Much better.
I don’t think it’s much more than this archive, through itunes:
http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/podcast/
Pete: I’m totally with you on the drawbacks of iTunes as a media player (I’m a Winamp user myself, but have no choice but to use iTunes on my office Mac)…and I could go on about that, but I’ll spare you!
There are actually quite a number of US museums already contributing to iTunes U, found under their “beyond campus” category: the IMA, MoMA, Walker, Met, and Brooklyn, to name a few.
I agree with you that participation in iTunes U potentially cheats the non-iTunes audience…depending on the situation, of course. If the iTunes U content isn’t available on a participating institution’s own site, then that’s a certainly a problem that ought to be resolved immediately for each offending institution. Though, from what I’ve seen, sometimes when the content *is* available on an institution’s site, it is a little more difficult to find and access. I would love to see more institutions take the work that they’ve done in organizing their content for iTunes U and apply it to their own sites…particularly in the situations where that organization makes sense!
thank you, tate, for making all this available. i am sure it will be a valuable resource.
ps @ pete: itunes is free. boo hoo you have to download it. the amount of things i can’t even access because microsoft won’t grant apple a license is unbelievable in this age. so, sorry, you aren’t getting much sympathy from me.
@andy, Just the podcasts? Couldn’t you get the podcasts anyway?
@Jonathan Munar, Without iTunes, I suppose I couldn’t have really checked. Everything on the website seemed to mention the universities.
@Barbara, Yeah, you didn’t really read this post, did you?