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Allsorts Online 09 on the Web

The Collections Australia Network (CAN) has posted six videos from the Allsorts Online 09 Forum in Adelaide for the benefit of those people who were not able to travel the distance. Science communicator Susannah Elliot talks about how cultural institutions can use history to look at contemporary issues. Gavin Artz explains how the arts can benefit from the disruptive digital revolution from the perspective of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT). Gavin Bannerman offers wild and entertaining stories about a mobile hairdressing salon in Cape York from the State Library’s Q150 digital storytelling project.

The presentations are a snapshot into some of the innovative projects happening in the sector. The panel discussion at the end of the forum was a terrific debate as to where the sector is going. It questioned whether institutions should become broadcasters or whether their role should remain as collectors and preservers of history. This is an issue the National Film and Sound Archive now faces as it relaunches its website Australian Screen Online. Allsorts Online 09 was hosted in collaboration with the State Library of South Australia and the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT). Here are some photos on Flickr of the event. State Library of NSW’s Ellen Forsyth uses Twitter as a note-taking device. The Twitter hashtag for the forum was #Allsorts09.


AusStage: Collective Intelligence and Data Visualisation for Performing Arts eResearch

Dr Jonathan Bollen: Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, Flinders University
AusStage is the Australian hub for research on live performance, linking researchers in universities, industry and government. It stimulates smart information use, promotes collaboration on innovative methodologies, and integrates access to collections. AusStage is extending its infrastructure to harness collective intelligence, to visualise the knowledge embedded in the AusStage database, and to deliver next-generation tools and services for information analysis, while continuing to populate the database with comprehensive coverage of live performance in Australia.

Jonathan plays a leading role in coordinating research for the AusStage project, with particular interests in data visualisation. He is co-author of Men at Play: Masculinities in Australian Theatre since the 1950s (with Adrian Kiernander and Bruce Parr, Rodopi 2008). His research on gender, sexuality and performance has been published in The Drama Review, Social Semiotics and Australasian Drama Studies.


Disruptive Digital

Gavin Artz, CEO, Australian Network for Arts and Technology (ANAT)
Gavin Artz’s experience in business management ranges from multi-national companies, to not-forprofit community organisations. His diverse background spans arts and commerce – with a BA in Politics; Double Bass and Composition Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; a Graduate Certificate in Business Management; and he is now completing his MBA. After working as a professional musician for many years, Gavin is currently pursuing creativity in business management with a focus on governance and strategy.


Digital Storytelling: Storylines – Q150 Digital Stories

Gavin Bannerman: Oral History and Digital Storytelling Coordinator, State Library of Queensland
Storylines is the State Library of Queensland’s digital storytelling project to capture the people, places and events that make up Queensland in its 150th year. Hear about the challenges of interviewing aboard moving steam trains, trying to contact travelling hairdressers in Cape York and making the outcomes accessible to the public.

Gavin has commissioned, created, acquired, registered, documented and made accessible oral histories and digital stories that relate to SLQ’s strategic objective of capturing “Queensland Memory.” Gavin is trained as an archivist, receiving a Graduate Diploma in Records Management and Archives from Curtin University. He has been involved with arranging and describing archival material, training cultural organisation staff in image digitisation, and consulting with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities regarding cultural clearance for images in SLQ’s collection.


Open Access: Conquering Copyright

Jessica Coates, Project Manager, Creative Commons Australia and the Creative Commons Clinic, Queensland University of Technology
Navigating the ins and out of copyright law can often be the most costly and difficult part of providing open access to a collection. Jessica will talk about what can and is being done by collecting institutions worldwide to share their collections and engage with audiences in the digital era – legally.

Jessica examines the legal mechanisms that encourage innovation in the creative industries, and promote and track the implementation of the international open content licensing movement, Creative Commons, in Australia. Prior to working for the Clinic, Jessica spent most of the last decade as a copyright and communications policy officer with the Commonwealth Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA).


Web 2.0 and Social Media: Collections, Flickr and the Media

Jenny Scott, Content Services Librarian, State Library of South Australia
In her presentation Jenny describes the process by which she brought a small private collection to the attention of a nation. The collection of photos and documents that could have easily been lost or discarded over the previous 60 years became the foundation of a Web 2.0 project that gained front page media attention.

Jenny is implementing the State Library’s presence on Flickr. After completing an Associate Diploma in Photography in the early 1980s Jenny operated her own commercial photography business at Port Adelaide. In 1993 she graduated BA in History and Politics from Adelaide University and in 1994 Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Management from the University of South Australia. After three years as an archivist with State Records of South Australia in 2000 she moved to the State Library of South Australia to take up the position of Curator Pictorial Collection.


Building Relationships with Media to Promote Research

Susannah Elliot, CEO Science Media Centre, Adelaide
Mention the word science to a senior editor and you’ll see them shift uncomfortably and look around for an excuse to get away from you. But talk to them about the dust storms in Sydney, why there are more mosquitoes this year, the science of Taser guns or even the bizarre mating habits of redback spiders and you’ll have their interest.

The reason for this is that those outside the realm of science and research still see it as an academic pursuit of little relevance to their daily lives. This talk is about making research the topic of media interest by making it relevant to the current debates and the breaking news with which we’re all consumed.

Susannah works with the news media to inject more evidence-based science into public discourse. Prior to this she spent more than five years in Stockholm, Sweden, as director of communications for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), an international network of scientists studying global environmental change. In the 1990s Susannah managed the Centre for Science Communication at UTS, where she helped establish the successful Horizons of Science series of media roundtables and was involved in numerous other initiatives such as Science in the Pub and Science in the Bush.

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Calculating the impact of your online collection: Ingrid Mason (CAN)

How do you calculate the impact of your collection online? CAN’s National Project Manager Ingrid Mason will be discussing this topic at the Allsorts Online Masterclasses in Adelaide on December 2. This YouTube video offers a little taste of what is to come.



Masterclasses
A series of masterclasses for curators, writers, artists, online producers and education specialists to learn and share insights and skills for work on the Web. The masterclasses cater for professionals from the collecting sector, academia, the arts, and media who want an injection of knowledge and inspiration in making collection material publicly accessible and usable and to build up community interest and participation in digital ventures. Please register now.

Session 1: Arts as a Living Culture (Gavin Artz, ANAT and Fee Plumley, Australia Council)
Session 2: Cultural Digital Storytelling (Gavin Bannerman, SLQ)
Session 3: Community Building with Social Media Tools (Ellen Forsyth, SLNSW)
Session 4: Collections Online: Ideas and Issues (Ingrid Mason, CAN)

Event: Allsorts Online Masterclasses
Date: December 2
Venue: Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) and the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus)
Cost: $250 per 3-hour session
Time: 9am – Noon, 1pm – 4pm

Registration: Register now
For more information, click here

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Digital Folk Art – A whole new world of art that is not art: Gavin Artz


Gavin Artz is finding business models for artists working in the digital arena. His previous career saw him working with corporate giants, now he is the chief executive at the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT). As he undertakes his MBA exploring the relationships between creativity and business management, the arts community has someone looking after its financial future. Gavin will be delivering a session at the Allsorts Online Masterclasses in Adelaide on December 2.

“In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” – Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)

Digital folk art comes from open source technologies and associated open distribution channels and raises many questions for the arts.

The price of technology has fallen, often to nothing, as access to technology and technological know how has exploded. Whole open source industries offer easy to use, powerful, creative tools that build digital communities of shared creative meaning. There is a digital culture that creates and distributes online, that reflects on the world and represents it to a community ready to digest.

This is a vibrant, living, creative culture and just as folk art is a daily response to the world people live in, decorating and telling stories on everyday objects, this digital folk art does the same. As with some folk art, digital folk art can be seen as kitsch, amusing and distracting decoration; some also can be seen as powerful and influential art. With the multitude of work created only a small proportion maybe seen as art, the people who create it and experience it don’t care what it is called, they don’t care about the art world; they live and respond to a bigger world, they live art.

If we live art, if our daily lives engage continually with artistic expression, do we in a modern western society have the capacity to recognise such a creative culture as art?



Digital folk art benefits from the change in economic models that the digital era has ushered in. The digital world encourages abundance (Anderson 2006), server costs are negligible, access and software are cheap or free. All work can be made available and no one person is mediating your experience. No one is limiting access to the full breadth of art and culture.

Galleries, museums and exhibitors are at a crossroads. These organisations have traditionally operated within the economics of scarcity; limited wall space, limited storage space. The digital world does not work on that model. The digital world does not need to show work in a building and you don’t have to leave your daily life to experience it.

*What spaces will be the environments in which to have an arts experience?
*Will we know we are having an arts experience?
*Do we need to know that we are having an art experience?
*What will be called art and what work should be preserved?
*Do digital artists want work preserved?
*Is there a role for curators when scarce resources no longer need to be allocated?
*How do artists make a living when it is difficult to show work and very difficult to sell work?

We are on the eve of a shift to a different concept of artistic creative culture. We are moving to a conception of the arts that does not just have its domain as a cultural activity, but one where this creativity is central to culture, community and the economy. This new conception of a creative culture is full of opportunity not only for artists, but all citizens. However, to get to these opportunities we need to review concepts we have long taken for granted.

Gavin Artz will be presenting one of the four masterclasses CAN, the Royal Institution of Australia and the Australian Network for Arts and Technology are running on December 2. Gavin’s intensive workshop will cover the issues facing artists and galleries as they enter the online world to promote artworks and collections. He will be running the classes with Australia Council Digital Programs Officer Fee Plumley. With just 10 people in the three-hour workshop, there will be ample opportunity to draw on their wealth of knowledge and experience.



Event: Allsorts Online Forum
Date: December 1
Venue: State Library of South Australia, Adelaide
Cost: Free
Time: 8.30am – 5pm + Drinks
Registration: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/189943/canforum

Event: Allsorts Online Masterclasses
Date: December 2
Venue: Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) and the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus)
Cost: $250 per 3-hour session
Time: 9am – Noon, 1pm – 4pm
Registration: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/189943/canforum

Image caption: High heeled shoe on tricycle, `Liquorice Allsorts’, designed by Ross Wallace, used in `Parade of Icons’ Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, Sydney 2000. Collection: Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. Part of the Sydney 2000 Games Collection. Gift of the New South Wales Government, 2001.

Anderson C. 2006, “Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More”. Hyperion, New York.

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Cultural institutions are becoming cultural producers: December 1-2, Adelaide

Cultural institutions are becoming cultural producers. Web 2.0 technologies are offering opportunities to self-publish, build digital stories, use social networking tools and collaborate with the media to tell stories about collections.

CAN is hosting a forum in Adelaide, Allsorts Online: the collecting sector, academia, the arts and the media, on December 1 that will explore the endless possibilities of how collections can be used creatively. The ABC and SBS will join speakers from galleries, libraries, archives and museums in sharing their skills and unique approaches in storytelling. Register here for Allsorts Online.

Sarah Keith will discuss SBS’s recent initiative with Regional Arts Australia. Sarah commissioned film-maker James Ashburn to drive across the country profiling artists in each state and territory. The vignettes were then edited and screened on SBS, in the ad-breaks, as community service announcements. This is a wonderful example of how cultural institutions can work with broadcasters to tell its stories to a wider audience. The stories can now be viewed online via the Regional Arts Australia website.


High heeled shoe on tricycle, `Liquorice Allsorts’, designed by Ross Wallace, used in `Parade of Icons’ Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, Sydney 2000. Collection: Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. Part of the Sydney 2000 Games Collection. Gift of the New South Wales Government, 2001.

Guest speakers
Gavin Bannerman (SLQ) — Brent Blackburn (TMAG) –Jonathan Bollen (Flinders) — Jessica Coates (QUT) — Susannah Elliot (SMC) — Sarah Keith (SBS) — Amanda Matulick (ANAT) — Sandra McEwen (PHM) — Darren Peacock (CCA) — Sarah Rhodes (CAN) — Angelina Russo (UM) — Jenny Scott (SLSA) — Chris Winter (ABC)

Date: Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Time: 8.30am-5.00pm + drinks
Cost: Free
Place: State Library of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia
Enquiries: enquiries@collectionsaustralia.net

Masterclasses: Wednesday, 2 December (see event programme)

Register Now for Allsorts Online

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