Category : General
Part five of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. You can search for the other parts using the search box in the top right hand corner.
His memory was flawless. Apart from having absolutely nothing from before he was thirteen when he work up alone in a hospital bed with the doctor unable to find any trace of him on any database. Whatever put him there had left his body covered in tiny wounds and a long, thin and perfectly straight scar along the left side of his skull. From that moment onwards, Duncan had been building himself from scratch.
Duncan pushed open the large steel up-and-over door of his single room flat. The dank sunlight filled the single room, barely casting any shadows. It wasn’t sparse. Duncan just didn’t have much stuff. People who lived in what was a stack of converted storage containers didn’t tend to have a lot of possessions. Duncan lived at the very top of seven storeys of concrete. It gave him a great view first thing when he left his flat but was bitterly cold in the Winter. Duncan looked over the favela that this part of the city had become. He took a deep breathe of what would be the last mostly-clean air for a while and made his way down the bolted-on stairwell tower.
“How may I help you?” said the smartly dressed girl behind the front desk.
“I’m here for a 1 o’clock interview. My name is Duncan.”
“Please take a seat. Someone will be with you shortly.”
The girl’s irises were an unnaturally bright green. As Duncan took a step back towards the rigid plastic chair, the green of the girl’s iris looked like it began to bleed into the rest of her eye until two emerald pools stared out from her flawless pale skin. She then raised her hands and her fingernails glowed the same colour. Duncan watched as she moved her fingers in front of her like some kind of elaborate dance of sign language.
“That’s an augment I’ve not seen before,” said Duncan. The girl turned her head towards him and the colour quickly returned to the normal position. She made a small smile.
“It’s new,” she said, “Only got it last month. It’s so much quicker now.” Duncan sat down and let the girl get back to work. He was glad to sit. The nerves were building up inside him. He watched the people in the Central Auditerminal. Some were browsing the variety of shops that went all around the edge. Some were sitting, reading or on talking on phones. A few were taking pictures of the four grand exhibits placed in this room. Most people carried suitcases or bags. Some were passing right on through to check into their flights. A number of people walked past Duncan to climb the marble staircase next to him. They strolled around the mezzanine before disappearing into the exhibition galleries of the museum. After fifteen minutes, a woman came striding across the auditorium with a slightly frantic edge to the way she walked. Her hair was ash blonde with slightly lighter grey strands in it. She wore all black. She gave Duncan a well rehearsed smile of greeting that made fine dignified wrinkles appear. She offered Duncan her hand.
“You must be Duncan. Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Jonquil, the Deputy Curator here.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Duncan said as he shook her hand.
“Come this way, I’ll give you a quick tour first then talk about what you want to do whilst you’re volunteering here. It’s only me giving the interview I’m afraid as our Head Curator is in meetings all day.”
“That’s fine by me.”
“I’m sure you meet him soon.”
Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com
Every Monday, I’ll be posting snippets of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. Here’s part four.
Chapter Two
Duncan had kept a meticulous record of every job he applied for. Every record included the original posting, the job description, the person specification, a copy of his application including his personal statement. Each record was sorted into date order of application deadlines. Each application was a small improvement on the last. The last item of each record was a rejection letter, or a page with a simple red cross on it if there wasn’t a response. Duncan had kept three hundred and twenty eight records of unsuccessful application for every position he could. Including several letters enquiring about internships or volunteering. He kept copies of the records digitally in several places, keeping them in sync but also had four binders of paper copies on the second-hand desk in his one room flat.
Record number three hundred and twenty nine was opened. Duncan inserted the final item: a letter inviting him to an interview with regards to becoming a volunteer at The Intramunicipal Museum. The letter had been stuck to his concrete wall for a week to remind him and to revel in it a little. It was only volunteering, but Duncan felt he had something to prove. Duncan was bright. Not a high grade student but a solid performer all the way through his educational career. It was down to Duncan never forgetting anything. Everything he heard, saw and read was stored away and instantly recalled. All standards tests said that Duncan wasn’t a savant or even struggled with containing that much information. He could just store it away. It made all of his teachers and lecturers unnerved as he sat there without making any notes. It didn’t make him popular with them either when he pointed out their contradictions.
Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com
- About Dbasr | dbasr
Dbasr is a free, open-source content management system. It’s designed to allow musicians and other rich media artists to build, customize, manage and update their own website and web presence using simple tools. [[Go watch the video and help fund the project at http://www.indiegogo.com/Dbasr - another fundraising tool]] [[via http://coilhouse.net/2010/06/joshua-ellis-presents-dbasr/]]
- To BP or Not to BP? Should Art Museums Accept Polluted Sponsorship? – CultureGrrl
Cultural institutions in Great Britain and the U.S., which had until now relied on BP, the British oil company, as a benevolent, generous patron, are now faced with decisions about how to deal with to the public-relations dilemmas posed by accepting support from a company that has been demonized, due to the horrific Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the company's much criticized handling of the aftermath.
- Content Is No Longer King: Curation Is King
We've arrived in a world where everyone is a content creator. And quality content is determined by context. Finding, Sorting, Endorsing, Sharing – it's the beginning of a new chapter. And not since Gutenberg have we seen such a significant change in who's able to use the tools of content creation to engage in a public dialog.
The emergence of a new King — a Curation King, reflects the rise of the new Aggregation Economy. It is an exciting time to be in content, and the best is yet to come. [[I don't know why I read these things, they only make me angry]]
- Influential Marketing Blog: Manifesto For The Content Curator: The Next Big Social Media Job Of The Future ?
The future of the social web will be driven by these Content Curators, who take it upon themselves to collect and share the best content online for others to consume and take on the role of citizen editors, publishing highly valuable compilations of content created by others. In time, these curators will bring more utility and order to the social web. In doing so, they will help to add a voice and point of view to organizations and companies that can connect them with customers – creating an entirely new dialogue based on valued content rather than just brand created marketing messages. [[There is so much head-slapping moments in this article, I don't know where to begin]]
- Conversation: Internet Of Things & Augmented Reality « Digital*Media*Convergence*Change*Web*2.0*Broadcast*Global
I think I’m going to ban discussions on privacy for future conversations. Not because it doesn’t matter, it does. In fact it matters so much that it tends to overshadow other aspects of the discussion. And you know what? The privacy debate is much the same… it always boils down to a simple trade-off. Privacy is currency… You might argue some of this is not augmented reality. I agree. But a slightly broader definition of what constitutes “augmentation” of reality leads us down very exciting pathways of thought. Architecture itself is a form of augmentation. And layering data, changing the utility of a space, expanding our interaction with a physical object, these are all augmentations of a kind. It was argued that architecure and urban design will change as we move down the path of augmented reality and the IOT.
- Brooklyn Museum shows the possibilities of Foursquare’s API
Their website features a Foursquare Community page that leverages the Foursquare API to highlight their activity and that of their guests in a unique way. The list of Foursquare users who’ve been to museum is highlighted. The tips users have left… are shown as well. This is a nice way to integrate the opinions and suggestions of other users directly into the site. The venue’s current mayor is shown, along with a list of the past mayors of the museum. They also highlight their mayor special at the top of the page, which offers a free 1stfans Membership when their mayor checks in at Target First Saturday events. The museum’s special badge, BK Art Star, is shown, along with all the users who’ve ever earned it. One of the most interesting parts is the list of Foursquare tips the museum’s staff have left on other venues in their Prospect Heights neighborhood. These serve as recommendations for visitors on places to eat or drink when they come to visit the museum.
- Museums Special Section – In Tough Times, Turning to the Web to Raise Funds – NYTimes.com
LAST fall, when the Neversink Valley Area Museum in Cuddebackville, N.Y., set out to raise $11,000 for architectural renderings of a new building, museum officials turned to strangers for fund-raising using the Internet… Through a Web site called Kickstarter.com, the museum met its fund-raising goal in fewer than 90 days with help from 69 donors… The fund-raising process, known as crowd funding, has enabled the museum to move forward with long-term plans for a state-of-the-art center to replace the historic buildings where it currently resides.
- How it works | Sponsume.com
Viral funding describes the contagious process of raising support and funding through social networks and online media.
Sponsume makes viral funding easy by offering a free customisable project page and easy-to-purchase project vouchers that can be shared with your social network.
- HOW TO: Crowdsource Funds for Causes, Creativity and Startups
Now, there are more ways than ever to raise money thanks the to Internet. A huge market of do-it-yourself crowdsourcing websites has made fundraising easier and more effective. The good news is that you don’t have to be a techie to access all of these great resources. Even the most adamant technophobe can get online and start raising money. [[Three links to new fundraising sources]]
Every Monday, I’ll be posting snippets of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. Here’s part three.
Talisman knocked twice on the large door of the meeting room with one of his rocky knuckles. When the door opened he thought that the room was dark. The darkness shifted position and Talisman found himself staring eye-to-chest with an enormous man. Talisman looked up at the chiselled jaw of a harden soldier, but also noticed the immaculately neat hair and designer glasses. What the man was wearing was also a paradox. It had all the fine tailoring of an expensive business suit with what looked like all the protection of military-issue bulletproof body armour. That’s when Talisman noticed the two sleek semi-automatic pistols in tactical thigh holsters made of fine Italian leather to match the briefcase being held in the man’s right hand.
Damn, thought Talisman, a Paladin. This only made things more difficult.
Paladins were originally the name for a royal guard. It then became the term for a warrior priest and in some cases a knight with some magical talents. These Paladins are neither righteous nor magical. They are employees of the Paladin Security International, highly trained bodyguards and security personnel with law degrees from some of the world’s top universities. They can act as a private military and legal representation, often at the same time. They understood all the loopholes of the legal system and often shot you through them. Those they didn’t need to terminate, they buried beneath litigation. No wonder the Portfolio Direktor was so clean if he had Paladins flanking him.
“Welcome Mr. Talisman”, said the Paladin with a deep Oxford accent. “My name is Mr. Barrett and I represent Paladin Security, Political Division. Direktor Kelman will see you now.”
Talisman entered, moving around the impressive frame of Mr Barrett. The door was softly closed behind him.
Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com
- British Museum Collaborates With Wikipedia – NYTimes.com
The British Museum has begun an unusual [[??]] collaboration with Wikipedia, the online, volunteer-written encyclopedia, to help ensure that the museum’s expertise and notable artifacts are reflected in that digital reference’s pages.
- 9 ways to use Youtube in museums’ MediaMusea
Good list of Youtube uses, which is useful because Youtube is almost barren for good museum content. It gets lost beneath the endless tourist videos.
- I’ll know it when I see it | Musematic
Lots of advice from Nik Honeysett with handout from his workshop on careers. Including how he cuts down job applications.
- Museums Now: For Love Nor Money
Necessity is the mother of invention. Or so we have been telling ourselves for ~2,357 years. This year, arts organizations and non profits are in a position to innovate . . .or else… How do these experiments in creating new economic models for supporting non-profits relate to how museums are thinking about financial sustainability?
I think we will see more museums looking at an expansion of services into new areas, and experimenting with hub-and-spoke strategies designed to reach into the community in new ways, or acting as an umbrella, a producer, and a curator of people, events, and opportunities rather than keeping all of those functions in-house, and the creation of new membership/rewards plans and other ways to raise money.
- BBC News – In Full: The projects axed or suspended by government
Stonehenge Visitor Centre: £25m
Rollout of the Future Jobs Fund: £290m
Libraries Modernisation Programme: £12m
THIS IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR
- The UK election: Don’t panic, be stoical and think radical | The Art Newspaper
Asinine article from former advisor to Tory on Arts and Culture. Suggests "find your own money" as solution. Also, "And, can we any longer avoid deaccessioning, if acquisition funds are now empty and museums have to fund acres of storage for third-rate pictures?"
- The Attic: Every little helps
I promise (and I hope you will too) to have a cup of tea, put a few pennies in the donation box, or buy a little something in the shop EVERY time I visit a museum.
- / ubimark.com
What can Ubimark do for you?
Ubimark enhances physical reality (books, places, objects) with stories, travel experiences, ratings or information.
» Ubimark Books. Paper books, such as “Around the World in 80 Days” are linked to the web through 2D codes.
» Ubimark Tours. Locations throughout the world are annotated with information, tips, reviews, personal testimonials, which are delivered through an Iphone App.
» The Ubimark atlas. This site is an online atlas for all the stories, information, or personal testimonials made available through the books or through the iPhone app. Information can be browsed by double clicking the markers on the maps. Each marker connects to a specific page and location. New information can be added to the books or to the iPhone tours by the users through this site. All you need to do is to create an account on this site.
Every Monday, I’ll be posting snippets of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. Part one is here. Here’s part two.
This year, Talisman had no strategy. The new Portfolio Direktor was a complete mystery. He couldn’t get close to him nor discover any information about him. The graven face Talisman wore was due to a real dread that this would have to be the first budget meeting ever where he had to wing it.
Talisman shuffled past the main entrance to Civic Centre with its sweeping stairway and strange neoclassical statues. Either side of the large doors was what the original architects saw was an appropriate symbol representing the triumph of man and the power of the people: a naked man punching out a horse. This entrance were for official visits, state ceremonies or high ranking-elected officials. People like Talisman didn’t use this entrance. He carried on around the side of the building to enter through two wooden double doors in dire need of a new coat of paint. Talisman signed himself in at the desk, took off his trilby-style hat and made his way through the less-than glamorous wing of Civic Centre. Most of the narrow corridors had faded blue walls with cancer-yellow strip lights. The difference in décor when he got to the floor of the meeting room was noticeable. The first being that everything had an extra six inches in every direction. There was elbow room here, despite Talisman not noticing another person since he got out of the lift.
Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com
Every Monday, I’ll be posting snippets of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. Here’s the first part of many more to come.
GLYPH
Chapter One
Ben Talisman’s 120th birthday was about a month away and the feeling coming from deep within his bones told him that retirement was rapidly approaching. He had been working at the museum for ninety years, serving as Head Curator for the past forty. Today would be the 50th budget meeting at Civic Centre he was summoned to. Every year, he walked alone with his craggy face set in a graven stare. He used this time to go over his strategy. It took an incredible amount of planning and research to make sure the museum wasn’t shut down of ransacked for financial reasons. The first few meeting, Talisman had relied upon presenting all the good work and all the beneficial effects the museum had. After one close call where the museum was saved from closure within the last forty-eight hours, Talisman took to gaining advantages from researching whoever was the current Portfolio Direktor.
The strategy had worked so far. The problem was no reason or excuse could be used twice. The trick was to stun the bureaucratic system whilst getting the desired result from whoever had the authority to sign off on the budget. This meant these meetings had become increasingly bizarre. One year, Talisman had planted false evidence in the Direktor’s house to suggest that his wife was a keen patron of the museum. He did is when he found out that the Direktor’s brave face hid a deep neurosis over his wife’s death six years previously. Another time, Talisman had found the Direktor was addicted to a rare hallucinogenic made from the sweat glands of poisoned West African Children, so he conducted the entire meeting dressed as a reptilian archangel sent by a Pulsar God from the other side of the Cosmos.
Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com
- Wave Hits B2B Media Part 3, Semantic Future – Semantic Web
Wave # 1: Search. Wave # 2: Social Media So, it is time to jump on the next wave, Open Data, Semantic Web, LinkedData, whatever we want to call it… Social media has created masses of new information that flows in real time to and from our mobile devices. That is great, but it is also a problem. Our poor befuddled brains need a bit of help figuring out which bits of that fire hose will help us. We don’t have an information overload problem, we have a filtering problem. Semantic technology is key to that filtering. But great writers and editors are also needed! [[Not a single use of Curator! Doubleplusgood]] 1.Top Tier Experts. 2. Dedicated Offshore. 3. Crowdsourced On Demand Work. 4. Semantic Aggregation Technology. 5. Open Data.
- Putting an Exhibit online vs. Creating an Online Exhibit « the empty room
The mobility of social media interaction disperses the public awareness of living histories and recognizes the role of the individual as a contributing element to the museums developmental process. “Moving elements in a city, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as its stationary parts. We are not simply observers of this spectacle, but are ourselves a part of it, on the stage with other participants."
- How Museum Curators and Directors Reject Donations | By Daniel Grant – WSJ.com
At other times, a gift that the museum doesn't want at all may be accepted "as a commodity," specifically designated for sale after a three-year period (to qualify as a tax-deductible donation by the Internal Revenue Service). A "commodity," he stated, is an "in-house term" for an object that is not registered as a piece of art ("like office furniture") but segregated in its own storage area awaiting an opportunity to be sold. These sales "raise a modest amount of money" for the institution. [[You can't do this in the UK.]]
- Museums and the DRM « Dan Cull Weblog
One of the essential components of the museum approach to disability detailed within these publications is the exploration of the Social model of disability, as a counterpoint to the medical model that permeates society. The other incredibly significant aspect of these publications is the framing of social activism as a museological method… However, when we consider museums approaches to disabled people, we do not see the issue of representation or inclusion in decision making protocols, instead we see a continuation of approaches of paternalism demonstrated by a focus exclusively on ‘access’: ramps, wheelchair accessible text rails, brail signage, etc. All of course needs that must be fulfilled, but, none of which challenges the underlying oppression of disabled people within society, and in fact by focusing on such approaches as if they were a burden museums in fact continue the oppression. [[Great post, Dan]]
- Patrik Schumacher on parametricism – ‘Let the style wars begin’ | The Critics | Architects Journal
Every architectural project is immediately exposed and assessed in comparison to all other projects. Global convergences are possible. This does not mean homogenisation and monotony… Parametricism implies that all architectural elements and complexes are parametrically malleable… Parametricism aims to organise and articulate the increasing diversity and complexity of social institutions and life processes within the most advanced centre of post-Fordist network society. It aims to establish a complex variegated spatial order, using scripting to differentiate and correlate all elements and subsystems of a design.
- ExhibiTricks: A Museum/Exhibit/Design Blog: Museum "Face Lifts"
Paradoxically, even though the buildings have doubled or tripled in size, there seems to be less inside than in the old buildings, not more. They've become unintentional "air and space" museums of a sort, because they're filled with more "air" and "space" than exhibits or activities.
And the staff to run the new place?
Many of them have been "furloughed" or "downsized" or just "fired" which makes one wonder about the future of a much larger physical plant.
- Center for the Future of Museums: The Whole World a Museum?
This UK-based project essentiall is encouraging people to catalog objects and share the associated stories in a public database. A prototype of the universal, dispersed, publically curated collection?… Will objects that have their own "accession" and "catalog" records be less likely to be discarded, and more likely to be treasured and passed to a new user?
- Can a university museum also be a science communication unit?
However, Medical Museion is currently reframing its identity, from merely a ‘museum’ to an institution for science communication. The point of departure for this identity shift is a growing dissatisfaction with the state of science communication. Traditional dissemination of science through mass media (either printed, electronic, or web 1.0-based) is no longer viable. Science communication needs to embrace the rapid emergence of the full spectrum of social web media (web 2.0), and many museums are adopting the practices of museum 2.0.
- A Learning Paradigm Shift: Cybergogy
Cybergogy focuses on helping adults and young people to learn by facilitating and technologically enabling learner-centered autonomous and collaborative learning in a virtual environment. At the core of cybergogy is awareness that strategies used for face-to-face learning may not be the same used in the virtual environment.
- NeuroLitCrit | Blog | Futurismic
The [MRI] scans produced will measure blood flow to the firing synapses of their brain cells, allowing a united team of scientists and literature professors to study how and why human beings respond to complex fiction such as the works of Marcel Proust, Henry James or Virginia Woolf.
- Future Vision – From the mind of Robert Rice
The Decade of Ubiquity is defined as the next ten years where every aspect of our lives will be permeated by digital, mobile, media, data, information, augmented, virtual, and so forth. It will be everywhere and accessible almost instantly. Everything will be connected, labled, monitored, tracked, tagged, and interactive to some degree or another.
- Museum 2.0: Should Everyone Work on the Front Line as Part of their Career?
Graduate students try to get entry level jobs that involve desks, not aprons. And senior professionals are not encouraged to waste their time talking to visitors in the lobby. While many museums are starting to institute weekly or monthly "floor time" requirements to help all staff become more connected to visitors, these policies are the exception, not the norm.
- The Editor and the Curator (Or the Context Analyst and the Media Synesthete) | Tomorrow Museum
So why are these companies hiring curators in name only, rather than requesting real curatorial duties? If all you want is someone to list what is good and what is not good, you might as well call the job “office Nick Hornby.” Not to mention, identifying trends, context, and environment is something a writer should always be doing.
- 8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalist
This is such a good article until Number 6. This could have been a like-for-like description of "Tomorrow's Curator" until it put curator and blogger *beneath* journalist.
- Marc Sands takes Tate role | Media | guardian.co.uk
He will be responsible for developing Tate Media, the organisation's drive to develop the brand across online, broadcast and social media, to "strengthen Tate's relationships with audiences and build social networks for the organisation". ***MARC, CALL ME!***
- Museos Unite: Solutions Series 2: The Offsite Museum Bar
From there I thought – what if museums owned offsite bars? I say offsite because I have been to events at museums where people are drinking. I have seen a woman so drunk she actually reached out and TOUCHED A PICASSO. Seriously. Not good, my friends. Also, the overhead costs of keeping a museum open (electricity, security, heating, whatever) are astronomical. Not to mention the insurance risk!
- Getty Museum’s Open Call for "Inspiring Leaders": Director Application Now Online! – CultureGrrl
Research for my inevitable hiring as the Getty's director
- The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators
To write about later. I'm going to have to tear a strip off this.
- Clarksons Box Creator Museum Box : Editor
***Why can't this link into my tumblr/twitter/delicious/etc. and make "museum boxes" of RSS data?***
Digest powered by RSS Digest
It’s been a while, but I’m proud to say that newcurator.com is back with a whole new look. Been working hard behind the scenes playing with all the new mechanics.
First up, the brand new newsletter: TRANSMISSION. Sign up in the sidebar if you haven’t already and get (hopefully) weekly updates every Friday. One section I’ll announce now is Open Mic. I want people to be able to add small bits if I feel they are amazing. Email me if you want to reach some very interesting people.
Next, I said I wasn’t finished with forums. Was disappointed that Ning was turning to a premium model so I’ve created my own.
Go to newcurator.com/forums/ and sign up and get talking. The forums at the moment are Technology, News, Projects, Museopunk and General Discussions. Always willing to listen to new suggestions. Looking forward to what comes out of there.
There’s more to come soon. Watch this space for something really cool.
With a new launch there comes a new editorial. Going to be aiming for more posts per day with far more structure then what I’ve been doing lately. I’ll try to still have space for those kind of things. Also, I found that a more interesting process is sifting through stuff to find what’s good rather than trying to find what is brand new. Got a huge backlog of topics I’ve been saving up. Going to be fun.
Always on the look out for guest posts.
Any feedback/bugs or anything else to contact me with, I’m always available through pete(at)newcurator.com
Newcurator is going through a major overhaul within the next few weeks. There are exciting plans afoot.
Right this minute, I invite you to sign up to the newsletter mailout I will be launching soon. Just enter your name and email in the form below and confirm your details. Usual privacy stuff: I will keep your details to myself. I will never give your details to spammers. I like you people.
Just a quick test post using the new wordpress client for my Android phone.
This opens all kinds of new possibilities.
January has been a rather quiet month here at newcurator so there’s plenty to catch up on. Most of last week I had that wonderful seasonal sickness that turned simple thought processes into mammoth tasks.
Then, all of the bandwidth was used up. Bizarre really. Normally, each blog post brings in a predictable amount of traffic. The fact that I wrote far fewer than normal suggests something may be going on. I can only imagine that there are many people who use Firefox with Javascript and ad-blocking software, which knocks out the Google Analytics code. Putting me on your allow lists may help.
We come to the crux of the problem. for the umpteenth time, I’m more popular than my means. I don’t make any money from newcurator. It all goes back into whatever costs come up. I’m relying on the goodness of your heart to do one thing: There are a few Google Ads on this site. You click them, I get a few pennies, you take taken to a site, then you can immediately close the page. You don’t have to buy anything or sign up. I still get the pennies.
Don’t go crazy with several hundred clicks. Google thinks that’s cheating.
Thanks to everyone for supporting me. I managed to scrape by last year’s bandwidth costs. I’ve got plans for burning up this year’s already.
Konnichiwa. I have return from the Island Fortress Hideaway. It was very pleasant week all round.
For most of that week, I found myself writing a good few thousand words of a novel for NaNoWriMo. You can see my profile here. Add me as a writing buddy if you’re doing it too. I know, I am massively behind the word limit. But I think two good days and I’ll be back on top of it.
I may, at some point, start talking about it on here every once in a while. It is about museums and the future, after all.
I’ve neglected the various parts of the newcurator datashadow, so I’m probably going to be focussing on them for a while whilst I play catch-up. You can find me at:
Delicious – Where I throw the various articles that have caught my interest.
Tumblr – Mainly, something of a scrapbook for images. I don’t tend to reblog or use text that often, and I’ll follow back anyone who isn’t looking like a spambot. I think I’ve only blocked one person for being downright disgusting.
Twitter – My Almighty Pulpit to the Outside World. I’m over 2300 followers, almost at 2000 followings and rapidly approaching 2000 tweets. As for the dramatic difference in who I’ll follow back, it’s mainly down to the fact that I don’t have a clue who they are and what they do. I will always follow back any artist or museum worker. I’ve extended that pretty far to mean almost anyone associated to that realm. There’s a few culture magazines, many kinds of designer, plenty of freelancers and a variety of students in various states of graduation or employment. It would help if you told me if I should be following you. @ or DM me.
I still continue to block snake oil salesmen. I do love the “Report for Spam” button. I’ve also created a couple of lists, “Museums” will just be a short list of museums I’m trying to pay a large amount of attention to, and “Museum Shinobi”, which I hope will turn into a comprehensive list of people working within museums. I may make an “Artist” and a “Museopunk” list soon, but without a decent RSS feed on each list I’m in no rush to do it yet.
Facebook – This still doesn’t have a plan. It’s a great way of discovering artists though. I get a new one every day and I do like looking through their work. Otherwise, feel free to follow me. It seems to be used as an informal way to contact me. Not as official as a blog comment, not as direct as an email, not lost in the masses of a twitter response. I’m kinda happy with that.
Flickr – People make me a contact, I return the favour, the whole friends RSS feed going into my feed reader. So I see all. Otherwise, I don’t use it for much. When I use photos in blog posts (something I do rarely anymore) I look on Flickr and add them to my favourites. Otherwise, I don’t use it for much.
Last.fm – Haven’t listened to anything in ages. Will correct that today. Try to friend me on there if you like, but I will judge if I want your music in my Friends Playlist. Radio Newcurator is still plodding along. Someone keeps listening to a lot of 80s synth. The people in that group tend to know me in some form or we have something more than just a one-off contact. Don’t let that (or the 80s synth) put you off. Probably best to say if I know you on another network.
And of course, the Museopunk network. It’s been a bit quiet recently but I hope to kick it around a bit. Go join.
MacGuffins
Museums have been around in the real world for a while and a rich set of understandings and expectations have grown up around them. But the web is still something like a western boom town. We’ve tossed up some buildings overnight but we have yet to live in them for very long. Some are just facades.
Facade by Jeff Doyle. Used under Creative Commons License
So far museums have done a better job of putting their content online than they have of reproducing the social architecture and topology of “the old country.” With only a few notable exceptions, most museums web sites are not “places” in a way that even remotely compares to their brick and mortar counterparts.
My sense is that most museum web sites do a pretty good job on the content side compared to how well they do on the social side. Museums don’t necessarily understand the social function of objects and spaces in their own museums and thus aren’t able to reproduce those functions online.
Museum by Jeff Doyle. Used under Creative Commons Licence.
What is the role of this painting (Picasso’s Artist and his Model) and this museum (Pinakothek der Moderne) in these young people’s lives? I couldn’t even find this painting on the Pinakothek website, but supposing I could: do you suppose they would provide anything remotely resembling the same “value proposition” to website visitors the the physical museum is providing here? Has anyone gotten married to somebody they met at your museum website?
Museums are places to make passes at people who wear glasses. They are places to show off your new wardrobe, practice your French pronunciation, people-watch, eavesdrop, and show off the fun facts you learned about Matisse or the boiling point of helium, or just stroll with a friend…
It’s hard to do any of those things at most museum websites, though if you think about it, you can do some of them on Flickr. Flickr has done a pretty good job at turning digital images into social objects.
Sociologists speak of “boundary objects” serving as interfaces between different communities of practice. There is a sense in which all museum objects serve as boundary objects. But the interactions occasioned by those objects are phatic as well as interpretive. Objects serve as pretexts for both small and big talk. They are the MacGuffins of our personal and public dramas; they create social possibilities that would not exist otherwise.
MacGuffin by Jeff Doyle. Used under Creative Commons Licence.
In object-centered social interactions, objects play the role of the ball in soccer, the cards in whist, the book of “Launcelot” in the story of Paolo and Francesca, by Ingres (above left).
Obviously, people won’t do exactly the same things in online museums that they do in real museums. But they will certainly want an equally rich experience. And for that experience to have anything to do with a museum’s mission, it is going to have to include social objects. Otherwise we might as well go to bar or chat with our friends on Facebook.
Objects are props. They share a social space with humans. The social space they share is the museum.
Jeff Doyle is the Technical Director at Zirgoflex, who are developing the software that powers Open Museum Online. You can also read his blog and follow him on Twitter.
I’ve got a few things I need to do this week, including a much needed tidy-up of the top right of this site. Then I’m basically be off-grid for a week as I’m leaving the country for a week.
I will be handing the keys over to August for that time with the only instruction of “Go nuts”. Should be interesting.
It would also be really good if there were some guest posts just to keep things ticking over. I don’t like getting overly editorial, nor do they have to be very long.
As a set of guidelines, I like articles about the future of museums or strange underground movements in the museum world. I do like opinion pieces if they’re about a really interesting topic. I don’t exactly have a list of what I don’t want, apart from I try to avoid review-style posts.
Ideally, I need to get this all set-up and scheduled before I leave. Email pete(at)newcurator this week if you’re interested.
How do I get myself into these things?
Thinking out loud on twitter, I said how I was thinking aloud that newcurator should have a weekly comic strip. Some kind of simple sitcom interlude.
Well, too many people liked the idea.
So I had to take it more seriously. After a weekend of thinking, I’ve come to some conclusions.
1) The idea of a possible four-panel strip about museum volunteers has something about it to work as a plot.
2) I cannot draw.
3) I’ve not been able to design some kind of stick-figure style that I can use to get over this.
4) I do not feel right asking people to help with this.
I know what I want it to be like. Think about Diesel Sweeties by the excellent R Stevens. That style means he doesn’t have to make a brand new strip every other day, he can copy and paste the characters and make minor adjustments (Well, he could. Truthfully, I have no idea how he works). Something like this means I could concentrate on writing rather than spending lots of time drawing features on character faces.
Look at Zero Punctuation by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. I love how this looks. It’s essentially stick figures, but there’s a style to it (that I’m in danger of ripping off if the early drafts are anything to go by). Again, simple, circle hands, circle heads and a variety of eye expressions. Some cutting and pasting and it looks good.
Oh, and don’t suggest stick figures. XKCD.com has all that sewn right up.
So, I’m screwed. I can write the damn thing, just no way to make it. I experimented with characters with QR codes for heads. It didn’t work.
To everyone who came back with suggestions or offered to help. Thank you every much, but I’m just not sure. Several people recommended programs or websites with comic book templates. This is instantly sticky. The main reason I haven’t completely ripped off Yahtzee is because I don’t want to get sued and maybe want to make a t-shirt. I’ve looked at them and didn’t feel the copyright issue was solved.
Massive thanks to the artists to offered to do something, but again I’m not sure. This is for a few reasons. Nobody will get paid, except maybe me and Google ads and possibly a T-shirt (which again throws up problems). I remember early ArtFridays. People were busy, which is fair enough, but some weeks I couldn’t get 20+ artists to get me an image of what they’ve done.
No, I would need to do this myself. I don’t feel right asking someone to commit to it every week with very little going back to them. Especially when they’ve got better things to do.
I did toy with the idea of an “open source” comic. I write the character descriptions, biographies and the scripts, a small online community do one-four panels each. Again, have no idea how this would work. It could probably be an interesting experiment, but what happens when nobody does anything for a particular episode?
So… I can only ignore this for now. I’m going to concentrate on the writing part and see what happens. Don’t expect anything soon.
I’ve been missing for most of this week and what a week of problems it was.
First, tried to get this site working with Feedburner. Figured gaining a few pennies via the RSS feeds would be worth it. The plugin THEY recommended broke the entire site. Thanks to @ncartmuseum for coming up with a fix.
Secondly, was trying to experiment with Zotero to see if it can offer a new feature for newcurator. It seems the people who have managed to get Zotero to post a WordPress post with every clipping are using some form of witchcraft. I wasted a day despite my best efforts.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I still can’t get my Delicious.com saved bookmarks into a daily post.
Thirdly, WordPress pushed an update that cause catastrophic problems with my lovely theme. Literally, the whole thing went down. It makes you wonder that WordPress, one of the biggest providers of blogging software, would tell people about the little changes that causes their plugins and themes to break everything in sight. Thanks to @firetail for this solution.
Lastly, I have had to do all this with a delightful sickness that made walking across the room a trial. So I was bedridden, wondering what I did for everything to crumble about my ears. Hence the lack of any serious amount of blogging. I’m feeling a little better now, but do plan to spend the weekend recovering and catching up.
Like this, something I wanted to do as soon as I heard: My thoughts go out to the friends and family of Officer Stephen Johns and everyone at the United States Holocaust Museum. I read this today from their twitter:
Despite our grief and outrage we reopen our doors today-June 12-and every day after with a renewed commitment to the urgency of our mission.
It’s been a tough week. My silly little grievances pale in comparison to the loss of a hero in the line of duty. This weekend, everyone take a moment, recuperate, reflect so we come back Monday better than ever…
Because of the urgency of our mission.
It seem people prefer my longer-form articles, so I’m going to change things around a bit. I plan to write longer posts from now on, expanding on ideas a bit further than my “research notes” style posts I’ve done in the past. I will still do a few of those when needed.
New features I’ve just put in are Tumblr and delicious. The theory behind these is that I’m often finding images and articles I can’t fit into the NEWCURATOR editorial but are still worth looking at. The Tumblr (which I imagine will be mostly images) will be stuff offered without comment and pushed into a widget in the sidebar. The delicious will be articles I’m reading, digested into a daily link post into this blog.
I haven’t linked the Tumblr to twitter, because I saw it annoying some people. If it would, speak up and I’ll leave it as it is.
Feel free to follow/befriend/network the Tumblr and delicious accounts on just grab the feeds. There aren’t any rules like I do with twitter. Everything is being fed into Facebook.
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