iPad opportunities 2

I wrote last week about my first idea about how how the visual arts world could use the iPad, looking at a new publishing model for Art New Zealand. That post has a bunch of introductory stuff about this three*-part series.

2. A mega-magazine for art lovers

Our arts institutions are busily pumping out content, print and digital: Te Papa's blog, City Gallery Wellington's new little room guides, Christchurch Art Gallery's 'Bulletin', Auckland Art Gallery's 'Reading Room' journal, the video produced for the Venice Biennale shows in 2009, not to mention endless catalogue essays, some of which make it online as PDFs, some not.

Then you have all the money and energy being put into digitising our public art collections. There's a better job being done here to aggregate content - to whit Matapihi and Digital New Zealand - but there's room, I think, to take this available stuff, throw it into a grid, whip together a quick intro or hooky narrative, and boom: a photo or art essay is born.

With not-too-much effort, this could be aggregated into one place - preferably, beautifully presented, and with an editor who balanced coverage and maybe commissioned or wrote the odd piece. Sure, it wouldn't be 'objective' or 'critical' coverage - but it's good stuff that's scattered around the web at the moment.




Add to that a regional exhibition guide - I'm rather taken with the work for Art Month Sydney 2010 - and you have an interesting and useful, easily update-able, nation-wide voice for the arts in New Zealand.


*Or more, if I come up with more ideas

iPad opportunities 1: A new life for Art New Zealand

Over the next week or so I'm hoping to get out a series of three or more* posts on possibilities I can see for the visual arts world to use Apple's iPad in their in-gallery and publishing work.

Apple describes the iPad as a 'magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price'. Smart people who I've heard talking about it suggest that it's the killer product that will bring your dad and grandpop into the world of mobile devices, and will potentially tip us into a whole new phase of online publishing. There's screeds and screeds of commentary on the device; the Guardian has a good round-up. So let's run with the idea that the ipAd is going to skae things up for a couple of posts.

Magazine publishing is a place where I can see the iPad fitting into my life. The argument for magazine publishing on the iPad is that it's likely to hit the sweet spot between an enjoyable reading experience (beautiful design, large, well-lit screen, improved interface for browsing and page turning) with portability and enhanced opportunities for advertising (an ad that plays a movie, or that links you straight to the relevant offer on the company's website) and bonus lower cost.

Here's my current magazine reading situation:

I have a subscription to the print version of the New Yorker that I am unlikely to give up. This subscription has great value to me. I read nearly every article. It fits into every bag I have. Looking at a ratio of weight to interest factor, a print copy of New Yorker is the best thing I could take with me on a one-day trip to another city.

On the other hand, I have a subscription to the print version of Idealog. Although I only really enjoy a couple of the articles, and find the advertorial annoying, I have it because it was offered at half price on Twitter, and $20 a year is apparently what I'm happy to pay for this content.

Everything else I either read online (if I want the information right now) or rent from the Library at 50 cents a copy (if it's for recreational reading). Wired is one of these cases - and they've already announced that they'll be publishing to the iPad in the northern summer.

Would I change my habits if I had an iPad? Would this take the place of the haphazard online and borrowed reading? Possibly, especially if, as some predict, the iPad triggers a new wave of niche or limited-life serials.

1. A new life for Art New Zealand

Art New Zealand, to my mind, is the kind of niche publication that should be eyeing up the iPad.

I might once have had a subscription to ANZ. We certainly have a huge back-run at home, but once you hit number 100 it starts to get a little sketchy. Either ANZ gets more valuable in hindsight, or my interests are largely historical (I was a heavy user of back issues while studying), or the content doesn't ring my bells any more. I think this last is most likely. There are various blogs and websites I can follow to get more timely reviews or updates as to what's on show, and the longer format writing is only occasionally of interest to me.

But I still think I'm part of the target market for intelligent (but not theory-laden) art writing. I was, for example, an avid reader of Art World Magazine, the Australian art publication that unfortunately went under last year, and never protested at the cover price.

It's important to bear in mind that ANZ is hardly a large corporate endeavour. Rumours of its demise or sale circulate regularly. I have absolutely no inside or official information, but I just wonder how long it will be able to continue on the way it does.

So - why switch to online publishing? First, there are cost savings. Obviously, no more print or distribution costs. No more storage costs. On the iPad, the number of colour pages required won't matter, because they won't cost more - so your mag looks better (loads of big, juicy, zoomable hi-res images of artworks). Design and layout costs may be reduced; I reckon companies are likely to spring up who will do what Wordpress themes do for blogs and Newspaper Club does for newspapers.

But where will the money come from? Almost all the advertising in ANZ currently is by galleries - many of whom have websites, and who would presumably benefit from being able to link through (especially those whose exhibition programmes aren't locked in in time for print deadlines).

Some content could be offered free; deeper content (maybe introduce quarterly auction reports?) could be offered at a subscription cost. Or - don't charge any reader. Offer benefits alongside the content, but working with advertisers to do cool stuff. Brighter minds than mine will be at work on this.

Of course, Art New Zealand is only an example of an existing publication that could turn iPad. John Hurrell's CNZ-funded reviewing blog (currently being redeveloped on a different platform) is another. And then there's the publications that don't exist yet - the most exciting contenders of all.



*Three being how many ideas I have right now. You never know, I may find some extra ones along the way.

Searching

Earlier this year, I (re)read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Stephenson piqued my interest in the early history of the Royal Society, and I followed up with Richard Holmes' hugely enjoyable Age of Wonder, James Gleick's biography of Newton, and am currently a couple of chapters into Lisa Jardine's Ingenious Pursuits - like Holmes' book, a history of mid-17th to mid-18th century science and invention told through the stories of the people who made them.

There's a romance to the period that I find irresistible: the way that the natural world seemed to unfold its mysteries at this time, the way literature and art and science and politics all intertwined, and the colourful characters who took personal and social risks to chase their dreams.

So when I saw yesterday in the Guardian that the Royal Society has released 'Trailblazing', an online library of its papers, to celebrate its 350th anniversary, I was stoked. Then I hit the site.

The (Flash) interface is designed as an interactive timeline - you pull it along, and hovering over little grey and red dots brings up pop-ups that contain a heading and a picture. Clicking 'More' gives you a small narrative about an article from the Royal Society's Transactions, and some links - one of which will take you to a PDF of the actual article, on another site.



The Guardian article notes:

There is the letter from the chemist Robert Boyle, asking the physician Richard Lower about the consequences of transfusing blood from one animal into another. Does a dog lose its quirks after transfusion and gain those of the donor? Does blood from a big dog make a small dog grow? Can you safely replace a frog's blood with blood from a calf, and might that change one species into another? The answers were no, no, no and no.

But how do I find it? Trailblazing doesn't have a search box. And if I did happen to find something I wanted to share, through clicking somewhat random red dots, there's no way of linking to it.

I understand the urge to build something 'interactive', although I'd argue that 'interactive' nowadays means being able to personalise a site to your tastes, or add your own information, not click and drag. And I understand the urge to give a browsable interface to what can be quite impenetrable texts. But I don't think Trailblazing makes as good a use of the awesome content as they could. Why not (a) use the people who made the science as your entrance points, rather than dates (b) make the deep content searchable along with the new narratives and (c) combine the two sites into one?

All about the story

In yesterday's post I mentioned journalist and blogger Julie Starr, which reminded me that I've been meaning to post about a new venture Julie is involved in - AllAboutTheStory.com

AllAboutTheStory is a marketplace for writers and publishers. Writers upload news features, stories, opinion pieces etc, and put a price on their text. Buyers can then browse the site to find pieces for publication. The site has cannily been launched in the lead-up to the slow part of the news year, giving editors a place to find interesting copy to fill the summer break.

The business model sees AllAboutTheStory taking a percentage from the sellers whenever an article is sold. Idealog has already signed up to the site.

At the moment, stories on offer cluster around technology and business. I'm interested to see whether any art writers take up this offer & start populating the Entertainment section (and setting their own value on their effort).

Post-NDF thoughts

Best of 3 has been quiet for the past few weeks, mostly because I was pretty heavily involved with the National Digital Forum, where people from galleries, museums, archives, libraries, universities, polytechs and much more come together to talk about New Zealand's cultural heritage in the digital world.

The highlight of the conference presentations for me was, without a doubt, Daniel Incandela's keynote lecture. Some of his points that really resonated with me were:

• Technology needs to reflect a personality
• It's okay for content to step outside your comfort zone
• It's okay to take risks

Another presentation that really hit a chord with me was Andy Neale from DigitalNZ, talking another the increasing cross-over and blurring between the physical and digital world, and physical and digital things. Today something - an object, a poem, a sentence spoken aloud - can have many manifestations, and be seen and used in many ways.

Julie Starr, journalist, blogger, and editor-in-residence at Wintec's school of media arts, has written a really interesting post on her Evolving Newsroom blog, looking at the similarities between issues and topics discussed at NDF, and issues and concerns around contemporary digital news media. In the post she concentrates on copyright, findability, digital and visual literacy, and the need to 'connect all the dots' (a big theme of the conference).

Talking with Julie after the conference, and mulling over things Daniel and Andy had said, it began to occur to me that collecting institutions who are describing and digitising their collections are increasingly moving into the position of publishers - not just in the sense of making books, or searchable online collections, but in terms of being able to reuse content for many different purposes, with different editorial voices being expressed and audiences being catered to.

Mash this up with emerging tools like Ziln, ArtBabble and Newspaper Club, and what might the opportunities be for collecting institutions to take risks, push content into new places, and give audiences a better sense of their personalities?