Including...Apple's new mixed reality headset, AHRC's latest funding opportunities and an immersive experience of early medieval Wessex.
June 6, 2023
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Digital Snapshot, bringing you all the latest digital news, ideas, tips and guidance for the arts, culture, museums and heritage world.
Latest News
- Apple launched its mixed reality headset for the low, low price of $3,499. This suggests the product is aimed at early adopters, and only time will tell whether this kicks off a new era for the technology or it goes the way of Google Glass.
- The Arts and Humanities Research Council has introduced two new funding opportunities: Curiosity and Catalyst. Curiosity is aimed at networking and idea generation, while Catalyst gives a leg up to researchers without prior experience of leading significant research projects.
- Twitter. Twitter Twitter Twitter. They've pulled out of a voluntary EU fake news code, lost another head of trust after restricting a film on gender identity and then reverse-ferreting, officially appointed their new CEO and bungled the launch of De Santis's presidential campaign. Using Twitter still feels like death by a thousand deep cuts, but who knows when the dam will break (or when I'll stop mixing metaphors).
Useful / bookmarkable
- This could have been in Latest News but feels like a useful case study. As part of Pride Month the British Library posted a thread about a fish that can change its sex, taking inspiration from an event about animal sexuality. The thread was then deleted in the face of gender-critical backlash. What we can take from this is the sad reality that organisations now need to wargame their comms response to any trans content.
- James Akers at the Digital Culture Network is running a free webinar on how to track custom metrics and build your own reports on 21 June 2023. Book tickets here.
- One of my current projects involves a bit of digitisation, and I've found this NLHF Digitisation project planner, handbook and examples incredibly useful.
Distracting / entertaining / inspiring
- This montage of people annoyed that their bins haven't been collected.
- This guy used Adobe Firefly to fill out the backgrounds beyond the canvas of famous paintings. This sums up a lot of the reaction. If I'm honest I feel like it's just a fun little experiment, but it's overshadowed by the ongoing debate about AI stealing jobs and pilfering creative work without permission.
- Hampshire Cultural Trust has teamed up with Ubisoft and Sugar Creative to launch an immersive experience of early medieval Wessex using a mix of live performance, augmented reality and video projection. It draws heavily on Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Valhalla video game, which recreated various British settlements...to varying degrees of accuracy.
Good Reads
- Beki Smith at CBSO wrote about taking on the challenge of launching a new season without reaching for a 'We're excited to announce' tweet. Working with their agency EDIT, they instead took lessons from album and product launches - resulting in massive increases in reach and engagement.
And that’s all for this edition.
If you come across any interesting or noteworthy content or have any of your own projects to share please do send it my way.
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You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.
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See you soon.
Adam Koszary
Head of Digital, The Audience Agency