fresh + new(er)

Over the past while I’ve been talking a lot about museums becoming media organisations on the web. This is occurring at the same time as the differences between museums, libraries, galleries and archives blurring. Like media, museums are coming to terms with the need to encourage active participation and co-creation between our visitors (cf. readers/viewers), [...]

We are very lucky to have within our museum a pair of media production labs - SoundHouse VectorLab - where the public can do short, low cost courses in video and music production. A spinoff of these facilities is a series of digital storytelling projects. Usually these projects are run in regional and rural communities [...]

Here’s another take on ‘the media revolution’. Prometeus reminds me of a more uptopian view of the fantastical EPIC2014’s Googlezon dystopia of a few years ago. In Prometeus, Google buys Microsoft instead of Amazon while Amazon buys Yahoo.
Possibly even more interesting than the future thinking ideas contained in these viral narrowcasts is their increasing graphical [...]

This week’s essential reading comes in the form of the Center for Citizen Media’s report titled Frontiers of Innovation in Community Engagement: News Organizations Forge New Relationships with Communities.
The report is written for those who are yet to become interested in the new opportunities afforded by Web 2.0 and contains plenty of global case studies [...]

Gordon Luk has, post-SXsW posted some well illustrated examples of avatars and the types of available customisation that can be done in various MMORPGs and social media sites.
Luk is looking at the differences between ‘explicitly controlled’ and ‘implicitly controlled’ customisations. The former being those that are created by the user/player (initial picture, autobiography) and the [...]

From the marketing world comes this quite useful subcategorisation of ‘consumer generated content’. Indeed, seeing co-created content through the lens of marketing can itself be quite revealing.
(summarised)
Consumer-generated media (CGM): At its core, CGM represents first-person commentary posted or shared across a host of expression venues, including message boards, forums, rating and review sites, groups, social [...]

There is an excellent recent post by Henry Jenkins titled ‘In Defense of Crud‘ in which he examines some of the recent debates around fan fiction, YouTube etc. Jenkins’ response to some of the criticisms of ‘participatory culture’ is wonderfully distilled into seven precepts which can be broadly applied.
1. We should not reduce the value [...]

The Gender Genie is a little text analyser that suggest the gender of the writer based on the frequency and occurrence of particular words. (via Gizmodo)

Typical - the day I go on internet-free holidays is the day Clay Shirky posts on Second Life.
Shirky’s examination of Second Life bores through the hype generated by ever increasing media coverage (yes, even in Australia) of Second Life. He asks, pertinently, what is the churn rate of users - that is, how many people [...]

Adam Cadre’s story Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured Koala is an amusing look at authority and authenticity on Wikipedia and is based on those Encyclopedia Brown books that you may have read as a youngster . . .

Photo by Brendan Fletcher.
In conjunction with our upcoming Great Wall of China exhibition the Powerhouse Museum has launched a new public-facing blog called Walking The Wall.
The Walking the Wall blog is an online travel diary being written over the next 6 months as Brendan Fletcher and Emma Nicholas walk the 3000 kilometres of the [...]

MacKenzie Wark’s new ‘interactive’ book called Gam3r 7h30ry (yes, l33t speak), is now online at Future Of The Book. Written as a range of short chapters it invites participation, comment and play.

Today we launched a new project, the Hedda Morrison photographic collection.
In 1992 the Powerhouse Museum was donated a large collection of photographs taken by Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908-1991). These photographs, numbering some 350, were printed by Hedda Morrison and featured in exhibitions held in Canberra and Sydney in 1967, 1970 and 1990. The collection was [...]

In the digital driven ‘Developmental Space’ of contemporary cinematic form whereby the relation and distinction between User and Viewer, between Viewer and Participant, between Player and Watcher is inceasingly thin there is the new noun we’ve heard much about and been kicking aorund - Prod-User. This noun is really growing on me as usuful and [...]

Excellent, fascinating and thought provoking article, Rhetorical Virtues: Property, Speech, and the Commons on the World-Wide Web by Rosemary coombe and Andrew Herman which examines the particularly American libertarian values behind the current debates around co-creation and digital media.
They look in detail at the Lego Bionicle controversy and the interaction between fan communities who [...]

Interesting comments from Schonfeld on How MySpace Beat Friendster
But it was Tagworld CEO (and aspiring MySpace competitor) Fred Krueger who really put his finger on why MySpace succeeded and Friendtser didn’t (that’s him in the picture putting his finger on it):

“There is a tendency to over-intellectualize the problem. The reason kids left Friendster is [...]

Check out Memory Miner.
Particularly check out the video of it in action.
The first version is available for download/purchase and looks to be a pretty amazing first generation family history tool - but could have wide application within museums not just in public programmes, but also in easily generating image metadata. Its use of XML allows [...]

Yep . . . it had to happen.
Current TV, the online TV station that broadcasts your own docos, videos etc now is experimenting with V-Cam - viewer created advertising.

An more sceptical take on Current.TV and user-generated/co-created content.
http://mashable.com/2006/02/04/currenttv-a-ten-step-lesson-in-screwing-up-peer-production/trackback/

Day Two highlights included the comprehensive presentation by the capture wales crew in the first session and the truly wonderful local work being carried out in regional australia by Malcolm McKinnon.
Capture Wales www.bbc.co.uk/capturewales
The BBC supported capture wales project is now quite mature, having recently passed the milestone point at which more content comes in [...]

Pete has kindly uploaded his audio recordings of some of the sessions.
Feb 3 - 600pm Joe Lambert
Feb 4 - 1115 am John Hartley
Feb 4 - 1115am Ana Serrano
Feb 5 - 900am Capture Wales (fixed)
Feb 5 - 1115am Malcolm McKinnon

ACMI’s Digital Storytelling conference was a bit hit and miss. Pete will need to give you the run down on day two but here’s some thoughts on day one.
The opening plenary from civil rights activist John O’Neal was no doubt honourable but seemed quite tangential to a conference on ‘digital storytelling’ - especially when John [...]