The Big App(le)

Posted in arts & business with tags , , , , , , , , on February 9, 2010 by culturalbranding

New York, New York…  Only months ago I was wandering the leafy streets of Brooklyn on a beautiful early Summer afternoon.  But even with the clockwork-like rigidity of my biennial visits to The Capital of The World, I still never manage to fit everything in, and last year both the Brooklyn Museum and Barneys fell prey to this lamentable sightseeing scheduling mishap.

I need not worry, as thanks to a glorious iPhone app released in 2009 I can now browse the Brooklyn Museum from the comfort of my East London home, or on the bus, or in the bath, or at the supermarket, or… well you get the picture.  The Brooklyn Museum Mobile Collection was developed by Adam Shackelford using Brooklyn Museum’s API (that’s Applications Programming Interface) – a function which allows outside programmers or even tech-savvy consumers to create their own digital applications using the museums data.  If this wasn’t wonderfully democratic enough for you, Shackelford’s app is also an open source community project, welcoming collaboration and contribution from anyone who wishes to be a part of the product’s development, mirrored through the Brooklyn Museum’s own website which welcomed feedback and comment on the app, aiding its development through the earlier version releases.

This move signals a much bigger shift in the ways in which cultural institutions engage with the consumer.  Cultural audiences are increasingly keen on this form of engagement with institutions.  Via this co-creation of product with the consumer, the Brooklyn Museum benefits from both meaningful product development whilst building invaluable product and brand loyalty – it’s precisely this brand loyalty which so appeals to commercial business brands.

According to the CoolBrands list, iPhone is officially the coolest brand around today, with its creator Apple coming in at number three.  Apple – a true ‘cultural brand’ – is a brand wholly aligned with culture, creativity and innovation.  The development of other creative apps through the Apple brand (such as the much talked about ‘Brushes’ app and the subsequent rise of ‘iPhone art’) has encouraged cultural institutions like Brooklyn Museum to explore the new forms of engagement on offer through Apple technology. Product development based on co-creation delivers huge benefits to the cultural organisation, demonstrating a dynamic and fresh approach to audience engagement.

Meanwhile, much closer to home the Museum of London is set to launch their collection as an iPhone app this Spring, via technology developed by e-commerce gurus CultureLabel, to coincide with the launch of their new Galleries of Modern London.

If only there were a Barneys app.  Oh well… I guess I’ll just have to go back again.

To read more about inspirational digital / cultural partnerships visit the Arts & Business Research pages.

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Let’s Get Digital

Posted in arts & business with tags , , , , , , on February 3, 2010 by culturalbranding

Blogging, Tweeting, IMing, Facebooking, e-conferencing.  The world is filling up rapidly with these brand new verbs.  If tweeting is something you thought limited to small birds and internet nerds then it’s time to shed your luddite ways and add another item to your list of new year’s resolutions – it’s time to get digital.

If you haven’t the first idea how to micro-blog or IM your friend, we promise it doesn’t hurt, but if you were looking for a more cultural introduction to the digital then why not swing by the V&A to take in the remarkable new exhibition Decode: Digital Design Solutions.

Curated in collaboration with onedotzero – an international arts organisation promoting innovation in moving image and interactive arts – Decode is the V&A’s very first exhibition dedicated to digital and interactive artworks, and is presented in partnership with SAP, one of the world’s leading providers of business software. 

The exhibition showcases exciting new media artworks including Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar’s bafflingly beautiful ‘We Feel Fine‘ – a stunning visualisation of  the ‘feelings’ being expressed in social networking sites around the world – and Aaron Koblin’s ‘Flight Patterns’, a strangely organic graphic realisation of real-time flight paths. 

True to form, Decode has a rich online presence – not least the open source artwork produced by Karsten Schmidt as part of the marketing campaign for the exhibition – Recode Decode – which invites budding digital artists to rework and manipulate the coding to produce their own Decode designs.  You don’t even need to be a coding whizz, a friendly step-by-step Google code page has been set up to help less techy types to give it a whirl.  To round off the journey, users are invited to showcase their designs on social media platforms such as flickr, Twitter and Vimeo with the tag decode09.

Decode has provided SAP with a new creative platform to demonstrate its new ‘clear’ brand, which aims to build greater visibility, transparency and accountability through its broad range of software and services to businesses.  Their partnership with the V&A demonstrates a unique opportunity to mirror their focus on user engagement and data interpretation within culture and new art practices.

Decode runs until 11 April 2010.  To read more about inspirational digital / cultural partnerships visit the Arts & Business Research pages.

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Fancy a Red Bull?

Posted in arts & business, cultural branding, culture, music on January 25, 2010 by culturalbranding

If you happened to be walking down Tooley Street recently you will have seen a new resident in the ever expanding development that is More London: Red Bull. Having taken over one of the newly modernised buildings on the ‘road side’ of More London, Tooley Street Terrace, Red Bull has made an immediate impact on the area with a glass shop front displaying beautiful wooden floors, a flat screen tv or two and a fridge full of… yup. Red Bull. And why not?

Next door to this rather lovely office space the hoardings say ‘Red Bull Music Academy 2010’. How very exciting. This means, presumably, that the international Red Bull Music Academy will be very near the Arts & Business offices for its 2010 workshop terms (term one: 7th – 19th Feb; term two: 28th Feb – 12th March). Since 1998 the Red Bull Music Academy has been touring the world with workshops for aspiring musicians, and now they’re setting up home in London.

Running alongside the two terms of workshops from the likes of synth guru Bob Moog and Joy Division’s Peter Hook are three weeks of gigs in venues around the Capital – take your pick from The Sound of Lucrecia at the Old Blue Last (9th Feb), Goldie and Roots Manuva at The Roundhouse (17th Feb), and the brilliantly bonkers Animal Collective who are rumoured to be playing, to name just a couple of the nights on offer.

While they’re not workshopping with the UK’s bright young things, the Red Bull Academicians will be featured on Red Bull Academy Radio – and, of course, there’s a Red Bull Music Academy app coming to an iphone near you soon… is there anything they can’t do?

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