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.
I hope that you all enjoyed the Christmas break! Feels slightly strange saying happy new year this late into January, but here we are. I spent my time off chasing after our toddler, who was in a perpetual state of chocolate and present induced mania. Fingers crossed that yours was a little more restful.
We've extended the deadline for Let's Get Real to 1 February, to give you all a little extra time to get applications in after the Christmas break. We've already got some excellent organisations signed up and we'd love to have you along too. You can find out more and sign up on our website. If you want to have a chat about the programme, you can drop me a line: alec.ward@theaudienceagency.org.
Latest news 📰
- Google has admitted that its AI viral video was edited to look better. The video was created to showcase the capabilities of their AI model and, unsurprisingly, it's a little too good to be true. It reminds me of Xbox's much maligned Project Milo.
- Here's some more information about the British Library's recent cyber attack. Before Christmas, their chief executive, Roly Keating, outlined the extent of the damage.
- You might have seen the recent Guardian article about the LibraryOn project and the challenge of creating a 'single digital presence' for libraries. The article is a tad damning, but Ash Mann (Executive Director at Substrakt) has provided a more balanced analysis.
- The Ministry of Justice is undertaking a consultation around scanning millions of historic wills. The scanning in of itself is great, but it's their plan to destroy the original copies after scanning that's got the sector (understandably) riled up. This article in the Financial Times does a great job of highlighting the issues with their plans.
Useful / shareable🤓
- What’s in store for 2024? Anne Torreggiani, our CEO, and colleagues from TAA have shared thoughts on what to look out for in the sector this year. Not exclusively digital, but lots of good stuff.
- Bloomberg Philanthropies' Digital Accelerator programme is now open. The programme aims to support nonprofit cultural organizations through investments in their digital infrastructure. Find out more on their website.
- Here are Blooloop's top 13 trends to watch in the visitor attractions industry this year. Their top pick is gamification, but they also take a look at immersive tech, robots, ethics and more. Heads up, it's not just tech and it's a long read. But it's better than catching up on all those emails!
- A new newsletter from Thomas Flynn shares the latest news and developments in heritage and digital 3D. The most recent issue covers everything from documenting heritage during conflict, to interactive games.
Distracting / entertaining / inspiring 💥
- My colleague Anra Kennedy has been reflecting on the sorts of challenges this years Let's Get Real cohort might be grappling with and she has written a think piece about the role digital culture and technologies play in wellbeing and how we understand and measure the value of that work.
- Artists have started trialling 'data poisoning' as a technical solution to AI models scraping the internet for data that can be used for text-to-image generation. Here's an article from The Art Newspaper on how Midjourney's AI allegedly used more than 16,000 non-consenting artists to train the model.
- If you've been watching 'Digging for Britain' (and even if you haven't) you can explore the Roman cellar dig site, found last year at Leicester Cathedral in 3D with annotations.
- It's the season of CES. The expo is always packed with weird and wonderful tech and whilst I'd suggest taking it all with a handful of salt, it's always good to look at the highlights and keep an eye on the sort of tech that's coming over the horizon.
Something good 👍
- "We need Jungle, I'm afraid". You might have seen the clip from University Challenge, where Aberdeen incorrectly answered 'Drum & Bass' to a question about Jungle. Twitter user Nathan Filer asked people to remix it, and the results do not disappoint.
- I'm undecided if this is good or not, so I'll let you be the judge. Warner Brothers is creating 25 second TikTok episode recaps of Sopranos, to celebrate the show's 25th anniversary.
- Someone created the James Blunt Museum in a phone box in Herefordshire and the local reaction is exactly what you'd expect it to be.
And that’s all for this edition.
Don't forget we're here to support you with training, research and consultancy, so please do get in touch.
You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.
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