More magic from BERG London

I've written before about my admiration for the design and ideas firm BERG. If you haven't seen the three short films they've put out recently, then lucky you! Here they are. Put aside 10 minutes of your Friday for a special glimpse of the future.

Making future magic (blog post)

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Incidental media (blog post)

Media surfaces: Incidental Media from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

The journey (blog post)

Media surfaces: The Journey from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

More magic from the Brooklyn Museum

One of the weird little one-day-I-might ideas that floats about in the back of my mind is putting in an application to Creative New Zealand too get funding so I can take some time off work and update/create as many articles on New Zealand artists in Wikipedia as possible. Frankly, I think it would be a better investment in the overall accessibility of information about New Zealand art than most of the publishing projects that are funded.

For a fantastic example of this in action, look at what the Brooklyn Museum has done for Seductive Subversion, an exhibition of women pop artists. As Rebecca Shaykin notes in a blog post on the Brooklyn Museum site, of the 25 artists in the show, only 14 had entries on Wikipedia, and 3 of these were 'stubs' (brief notes that form a placeholder for a full entry):

So I knew I had my work cut out for me. Over the summer and early fall I created and expanded pages for the artists who needed them most. In so doing, I learned a great deal about their lives. Who would have guessed, looking at Evelyne Axell’s psychedelic nudes, that she had learned to paint by taking private lessons with René Magritte? Or that Rosalyn Drexler, in addition to being a Pop artist, was also an award-winning playwright and one-time Mexican wrestler? The more I learned—of Letty Eisenhauer’s rousing performances at early Happenings, Boty’s friendship with Bob Dylan, McAfee’s hilarious illustrations for National Lampoon—the happier I was to know that the biographies of these remarkable women would soon be widely available.

Not only has the Museum invested in improving worldwide access to information about the artists in the exhibition - they've brought Wikipedia back into the exhibition, using iPads. As with so much of what the Museum does, it's an experiment, as Shelley Bernstein explains:

So, what are we looking to learn from this? First, we’d like to see if visitors want this much information in an exhibition setting. The interactive uses the 25 artist articles as a starting point, but visitors have access to the entire wiki from there. Most educators and interpretation staff will say less is more and tend to favor a more guided learning experience, but that’s counter to the web. When providing a web resource in the gallery, do visitors want more control over the information they browse? Second, we’d like to see how visitors react to this type of hardware and how we’ve installed it. Does this provide a better user experience both for the people who want to use it and those who’d rather not be distracted by tech in the gallery setting? Should we be using this type of low-impact equipment in more places throughout the museum? Third, we are going to be looking at browse statistics and how they differ when people are standing near objects versus when they are sitting. Does a seating area mean visitors spend more time with the devices or do people really want to have the information near the works of art?

The thing I admire about Shelley and the Museum is that they don't sit on their laurels (which, in my sector, are acknowledged as being freaking huge). They're constantly trying new things, but that's not rare. What they do superbly, in my opinion, is evaluate their experiments and share their findings. It's a generosity of information and spirit for which I am constantly grateful.

Web muster

Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, on the 40-year history of the cartoon

Censorship was straightforward, and Trudeau never complained because he says "I knew the editors were caught between a rock and a hard place". More sinister was the decision of about a third of the papers that carried him to switch him from the comics to the editorial page alongside their political commentators. "We resisted the move," Trudeau says. "For the simple reason that there are far more readers on the comics page than on the comment page and you want to be where the reader is."

Dwight Garner writes in the New York Times about the Paris Review's release of its entire backlog of author interviews online

The Paris Review interviews are famous, or infamous, for prying into how writers physically get their words onto the page. Things like No. 2 pencils are turned into fetishistic totems. Hemingway, we learn, wrote standing up; Capote, lying down; Raymond Carver often composed in his car.

Thompson, interviewed in 2000, decades after “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” makes delicious mockery of this sort of inquiry. He is asked: “Are there any mnemonic devices that get you going once a deadline is upon you — sharpening pencils, music that you put on, a special place to sit?” He leans back and replies, “Bestiality films.”

John Allen Paulos revisits C.P. Snow's declaration of the division between science and the arts, looking at statistics and storytelling

The focus of stories is on individual people rather than averages, on motives rather than movements, on point of view rather than the view from nowhere, context rather than raw data. Moreover, stories are open-ended and metaphorical rather than determinate and literal.

Clasp

I'm an enormous fan of Kobi Bosshard's work; I bitterly regret not being around 30 or 40 years ago to start amassing pieces then (especially when I look at what Te Papa has). I don't think I've posted about something I've bought, but I'm going to make an exception for the Bosshard necklace I collected today.

Very occasionally, I get to have a pure gut reaction to something, and it's amazing. I had one at the NGV in Melbourne, walking round a corner and discovering a Cattelan, and laughing aloud in surprise and joy. I had one when I wept at a Webstock conference as Rives performed. I had one when I finished Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses.

And I had one when I put on the Bosshard necklace. Like the Christian sacramentals, the necklace is designed to be worn with one piece on the chest and the other below the nape of the neck. When you settle the two (heavy silver) pieces in place, they seem drawn to each other - it's like being pressed between a pair of hands. It is the most physical reaction I've ever had to a piece of jewellry, and as I write this now, wearing the necklace, I realise this pure reaction will always be there.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who helped share the news about my ticket giveaway for the Webstock Mini on 3 November.

The tickets have all been snapped up, and I'm looking forward to seeing the winners on the night. In fact, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone on the night - why not check out the list of speakers & rsvp?

Dazzled

Just as I get started on the Royal Society's science book shortlist, the winner is announced: Nick Lane's Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution.

I'm currently half-way through James Hannam's God's Philosophers, in which he tries to correct the general conception of the Middle Ages as a period where science was devalued, if not persecuted, by the Church, and position the period instead as a time of development of classical thinking and preparation for the glorious 1500s. It's an absorbing read, if a little too colloquial for my taste; but certainly an amazing insight into the minds of people whose entire thought processes were radically different from our post-Enlightenment positions.

The Guardian has reviewed all the books on the shortlist - why not start on those before you hit the books?

James Hannam - God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

Nick Lane - Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

Frederick Grinnell - Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meet Objectivity and Logic

Marcus Chown - We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What everyday things tell us about the universe

Henry Pollack - A World Without Ice

Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw - Why Does E=mc2?

Bonanza: Webstock Mini ticket giveaway

UPDATE

All the tickets in the give-away have gone. But it's not too late to buy tickets for the event under your own steam. Go on - it'll be worth it.

There are few things more satisfying than chances to support something you believe in.

The upcoming Mix and Mash competition is such a thing. I believe that open data is an inherently Good Thing. I believe in the mantra that if we release our content and data for reuse and remix, amazing things will happen. I believe, as Nick Poole might phrase it, that the data is the sausage and the openness is the sizzle.

But I'm worried that advocates like me might slip into the build-it-and-they-will-come mindset, and then be discouraged - even dissuaded - when data and content are released, but we don't see any sizzle. And I'm even more worried that the people who create and own the data might start feeling like this.

Mix and Mash: the great NZ remix & mashup competition is being run to stimulate the sizzle. Cash and other prizes will be up for grabs for people who make great stuff using New Zealand content and data.

The competition categories and prizes are being announced at a Webstock Mini on 3 November here in Wellington. It will be an evening of awesome speakers and fine hospitality. You should all be coming.

Because I believe in the cause, I wanted to give something back (for me, this is a bit like my Brooklyn Museum giveaway last year). So ...

I'M GIVING AWAY 5 TICKETS (valued at $18 each) FOR THE WEBSTOCK MINI

To get a ticket, all you need to do is email me (auchmill at gmail dot com) or leave a comment on this post. There's just one catch. You need to tell me that you haven't been to a Webstock event before. Like open data and the Mix and Mash competition, Webstock is a Good Thing and, moreover, a community full of wonderful people that more people should join.

Disclaimers

1. Tickets are being given out on a first come first served basis.

2. When I was working at the National Library, I was part of the Digital New Zealand team that's running the Mix and Mash competition. Now I work at Boost New Media, a web design & development company that's been working with DigitalNZ since the project started two years ago. I'm professionally involved in helping organise Mix and Mash, but this giveaway is a totally personal activity.

Things you must do

Go along at hear Nick Poole, CE of the UK's Collections Trust, speak in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington. I don't care if you don't work in a museum, the man is awesome and his stories and ideas should be listened to.

Nick keynoted (yes, I just verbed that, I'm in a hurry to get this message out) at the National Digital Forum at the start of this week, and brought the house down. It's 90 minutes of your life I promise you will not regret.

Auckland: 22 October (tomorrow!)

Christchurch: Tuesday 26 October

Dunedin: Wednesday 27 October

Nick's tour is sponsored by National Services Te Paerangi at Te Papa.

I love you David Sedaris

It really is that simple

Things that I'm still in two minds about

Christopher Knight on 'vanity shows':

The visitor experience is rarely satisfying. At a vanity show, exploring an artist's specific talents or a group of artists' larger cultural meaning is secondary. Focus is shifted to the collector's aptitude. The leading question viewers debate is simply: How skillful has this shopper been? Did he buy great things? Did he assemble them in interesting ways? What will become of the collection? Personal consumption becomes the primary issue.

I love the Big Blog Theory

I really really do

Discounting

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Joffrey using the discount site Groupon to offer memberships - here's a much longer and more thoughtful piece by the masterful Nina Simon.