Common Ground

Photograph from the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Flickr Commons

Look at this great Flickr Commons project. Common Ground is a real-time global meet-up of the instiutions featured on The Commons and their users. The project centres around a user-curated slideshow which will be assembled using collection images voted for by the public (follow the instructions on the link above and have a go yourself!). Each institution will be projecting the slideshow on the exterior of their buildings for viewing by the widest possible audience (imagine Hamer Hall at night covered in luminous collection images - what a profile-raiser!) Users will also be encouraged to follow Flickr discussion to find out about times and places they can meet up in person.

If you look at the images many of them are not that exciting on their own. What they have in common is that they are out of copyright, under-utilised and possibly under-researched by the isntitutions that own them. Positioning them on The Commons has given these images a whole new lease on life and given the public an exciting new way to interact with and appreciate them.

Have a think about what collections we have that could benefit from this kind of profile and get back to me!

Caz

Australia's Culture Portal

Glasses worn by Barry Humphries as Dame Edna, the Arts Centre's Performing Arts Collection

Do you guys know about this site? It was created by the federal government some years ago but it is quite a good one stop shop for leads on all kinds of performing arts including rock music, dance, circus, opera, theatre and comedy. The Arts Centre's collections are linked to some pages too which is always pleasing!

Some of the links are better than other (quite a few to Wikipedia) but it is definately worth keeping in mind. You can also search by audience (children, families and young people!) which can be handy.

Have a great weekend
Caz

Another crowd generated exhibition

Sometimes it's amazing what is going on right under your own nose! Do you all now about the Indoor Laneways Project? It's an online collaborative arts project created and moderated by Dan West in Education, Families & Young People as one of the Arts Centre's Youth Initiatives. Its aim is to encourage regional and metropolitan students to create and manipulate digital sound and artwork.

A curated selection of the works created will be on display in the Blackbox for two weeks during September so look out for it.

Caz

Exhibition inspiration

How would you feel about letting someone else do some of the curating? Here are a couple of different approaches to curating exhibitions that you might not have considered.

The first is Powerhouse's The Odditoreum which began life as an idea for a small school holiday program but resulted in a popular exhibition, book and limited edition print. The project had many constraints including a budget of only $7000 (excluding staff time) and was conceived as a 'low-tech' way of engaging visitors with the permanent collection.

The show was 'curated' by children's book author Shaun Tan. Tan chose 10 objects from a long list he was sent by the Public Programs Producer who had compiled and refined the list in consultation with curators, registrars and conservators. He then wrote fictitious labels of approx. 100 words for each object. Visitors were also invited to write their own labels. The 'real' label information was also included by only at the end of the exhibition.

The show was a hit and is a good reminder that you don't always have to spend a million bucks to pull off a good idea. It is also a good 'real-life' example of a the type of engagement people are also seeking online.

The other idea comes from the Brooklyn Museum and is called Click!: A Crowd Curated Exhibition. This exhibition was inspired by the notion of 'the wisdom of crowds' as espoused by business and financial columnist James Surowieki. Rather than try and explain it just click on the link for a short, sharp explanation.

Does anyone else know of any interesting exhibition concepts? Why not let us all know about them by leaving a comment below!

Caz

Virtual Museums

Uploaded to Flickr on June 12, 2007by bcg8

As we struggle to get our heads around how best to present ourselves in the virtual world, the Smithsonian is, of course, light years ahead. When you have a spare moment check out these amazing online projects. The first is the Ghosts of A Chance alternative reality game which was held last year. The project was set up as a way for visitors to interact with the collection at the Luce Foundation Centre for American Art. The project ran for three months and attracted 6,000 online visitors as well as over 200 on-site visitors. It was a pretty crazy combination of creating, gaming, online communication and detective work and takes some time to get your head around reading about it after the fact but what a concept!

The other project takes virtual reality even further. This is the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum hosted on Second Life. This really is out there! Basically you set up an avatar for yourself in Second Life and he/she walks through the Museum and visits the exhibitions.

Have fun!

Caz

Do You Know TED?

If you don't you should introduce yourself! TED Ideas Worth Spreading centres around an annual conference which invites the world's most influential thinkers to speak on for 18 minutes on a topic of their choosing. Many of the resulting talks are available for viewing online including the always fascinating Clay Shirky on 'How Social Media Can Change History' and Tom Wujec on 3 ways the brain creates meaning.

Check it out.
Caz

Four well dressed men holding beer bottles

Here is a great example of how Web 2.0 applications, in this case Flickr, encourage public interaction with public collections. Do you know about Flickr Commons? The Commons was set up as 'your opportunity to contribute to describing the world's public photo collections'. Participating organisations include various international institutions such as Library of Congress and New York Public Library but also Powerhouse, State Library of NSW, State Library of Qld and the Australian War Memorial. Institutions upload collections with no known copyright restrictions and visitors help describe images either by commenting or 'tagging' (more about tagging and folksonomies in another post).

The Powerhouse photostream is as usual very well set up. This interesting photo is from the Phillips Glass Negative Collection. Check out the comment stream below the photo. It starts and ends with the usual boring 'great photo' type comments but in the middle is this amazing exchange between two people who go on a web quest to try and work out if the unidentified men are actually painters of the Heidelberg School! Even if the result is inconclusive the way in which they go off to other sites and come back to report their findings shows how even an unidentified image can fire the imagination.

There are already a number of performing arts-related images on the site including several from the State Library of NSW. Imagine what we could do with our photographic collection?

Caz