And Thanks for all the Fish!

So this will be my last blog post for Technology in the Arts.  My federal student work study allotment has run its course, and I am now foraging in the desert of uncertanty of this horrible job market.  So to quote Baudrillard, "Welcome to the Desert of the Real." or wait, was that Morphious?  Anyway, I thought I'd post some more Friday Fun Links for those of you still paying attention. First up, is this amazing Cellist pulling a Nick Zinner with some effects pedals and a Macbook Pro.

And then there's my favorite plot summary site.

My New favorite Photographer

My Old favorite Photographer

My Favorite Street Artist

and I leave you with something Beautiful

If anyone out there is interested in hiring a tech savvy, hard working recent Graduate from Carnegie Mellon with a mild addiction to coffee and contemporary art, feel free to contact me or have David pass on the news that you are looking for someone to fill the position of awesome.

Thomas Vannatter

Rethinking ROI for Social Media

For many arts organizations out there right now, this is how we seem to be calculating the ROI for Social Networking and Media.  Everyone seems to be groping in the dark to boil down a simple monetary answer to this question of, "What is *your organization here*'s return on investing in Social Media?"

While there are solid(ish) ROI calculators for Social Networking out there, and they do provide cells for number of friends added, and amount of donors added to your email lists vs. amount of volunteer/employee time and money spent, I feel like somehow they all miss the point.

Yes it is nice to have quantifiable data to back up the decision to dedicate precious and dwindling time and money to a project.  However, the main source of return from social media simply isn't quantifiable.  We're talking about trying to quantify human interaction and communication.  And we are also talking about laying the groundwork to adapt to how the world is changing, and how our audiences are staying informed/using the internet.  The worth of these tools, and the time spent cultivating relationships with our audiences does not exactly have a set monetary value.

We can begin by monitoring click through rates, and number of new "friends" on Facebook and weighing this against how much time and money is being spent, but this doesn't exactly give a complete picture of what is going on.

If an organization is really committed to utilizing social networking not just for marketing and revenue generation, but for communicating and engaging their target audience and creating a community of individuals that are interested in the core values and beliefs of that organization then how on earth can they boil that down to a Return On Investment.

As of right now, the amount of direct donations that non profits are receiving from their social network sites is arguably marginal.  Admittedly there are some outliers who are able to generate significant returns from their social networks, the Brooklyn Museum's 1stfans springs to mind.  However, as a communication tool for promotion and engagement, a method of gathering email-ing lists, and for managing and maintaining positive feedback about the organization, social networks are proving to be invaluable pretty much across the board.

The overwhelming problem of course is that once your organization has developed this online social network, simply having a static page isn't enough.  A Facebook page is less a Billboard than it is a Soapbox, so you have to treat it like one.  It might be ok for your organization to have an unpaid intern managing some of your social media because they are by and large in the Heavy User demographic and know all the ins and outs, but without some sort of direct executive insight and direction you now have a 20-something basically dictating the brand identity of your organization and running a large part of your marketing department.

So I guess that's another way of looking at the ROI, what would happen with no investment of time and resources?  The whole "If not X" senario.  As the world slowly begins to adopt social networking as a standard means of communication and the source for their daily information, we may see an increase to the direct donations to organizations through these social networks.  I mean, if politicians (read old rich people) are already doing it, then how far behind the curve are we if we aren't?

Arts Video Site

I've been wanting to write something about this site for a while now, but I've had a hard time figuring out what exactly to say about it beyond just describing what it is, who's involved, and what they do.

ArtBabble is more than just another collection of videos about art.  Each video comes with a sidebar of notes and more information that the viewer can dive into in order to explore more aspects of what the video is presenting.  At times this sidebar can be a distraction, and other times can lend more depth to something like an Art21 video about Jenny Holzer that you've seen a few times.

The bulk of the videos come from MoMA, SFMoMA, Art21, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, and the Smithsonian.  By and large, the content is geared towards the art novice, but there are some incredibly poignant videos for arts managers on the site, like the Museums and the Web 2009 video posted below.

So far my favorite video series has been the Behind the Scenes at the MoMA, but all of the videos I've watched are really high quality and very informative.

In an Update, last night ArtBabble won a Gold Muse award from the AAM for best online presence.

Really Alternative Exhibition Spaces

Deviating from my usual blog posts about new technology's influence on the Art world, today I would like to talk about alternative exhibition spaces and some of the issues surrounding Marketing escalation.

I've mentioned in the past that the Younger than Jesus crowd has a general disdain for excessive marketing and that we simply do not like being sold to.  We Tivo the shows we want to watch to remove the adds, and we employ as many add-ons as we can install into our web browsers to reduce the amount of online advertising we are subjected to.  We have a certain amount of immunity to advertising, our eyes glaze over and we cease to pay attention to billboards, print adds, junk mail, spam, pop ups, and recently even most viral marketing has become groan worthy.

Some marketing companies like NPA outdoor have been upping the ante by advertising on billboards that are erected without permits.  An intrepid group of artists took it upon themselves this past weekend to appropriate 120 of the over 500 illegal NPA outdoor owned billboards as alternative exhibition spaces.  Some amazing images, and more information about the project Here, and Here. This project is a really interesting look at the debate over public space, and the ubiquity of advertising.

Not to say that there aren't innovative and interesting marketing campaigns out there.  This add, for instance, probably sold more Cat Power and David Bowie songs on Itunes than it did Lincoln MKS's.  (on a side note, if anyone knows where to find the full version of this cover, please post it in the comments) And this one shows how versatile Vimeo is more than it inspires me to buy a Honda Insight.

One thing that all of these projects, and even some of these advertisements point out is that there is still a deep appreciation for art out there, which bodes well for those of us making a living in the art world.

Does this make you think of how you can approach marketing an arts organization differently?

The MoMA recently received some blow back by hiring The Happy Corp to "mashup" their subway advertising campaign.  But were their intentions in the right place?

Let us know what you think.

New Media Opportunities part 2

This time it's Personal

Last Wednesday I touched upon four readily available social platforms that Arts Organizations can use to maintain relationships with their audiences.  Today we'll look at some more online tools that may have been overlooked.

Linked In:

LinkedIn is a professional social network that allows you to connect with peers in the field.  Much like Facebook, organizations are able to create a LinkedIn Group with the ability to post discussion topics and aggregate blog posts into the News Feed.  However, your audience within LinkedIn is generally different than your audience in Facebook.  This also means that the content and tone of your discussion posts should be differentiated as well.  Your Facebook fans will generally consist of audience members and people interested in your organization, where as LinkedIn will primarily consist of professionals in the field.  Discussion topics will be more focused on the day to day nuts and bolts of the organization, and it provides a good platform to ask questions like,

"I had a question for folks working within arts organizations.  What ticketing software are you using? Are you satisfied with your solution? Thanks!"

Google Alerts:

Depending upon the size of your organization, it may be a good idea to set up some Google Alerts that keyword search for articles about your organization, and artists or performances that you are presenting.  It is a really convenient method of gathering information about what is being said about your organization online, and alerts are available as an email or via an RSS Feed.

Flickr/Youtube:

These are a bit obvious, but some arts organizations still are not taking advantage of these two media sharing sites.  Keeping up with a Youtube channel can be quite a bit of work for an arts organization, especially if you are trying to maintain a constant stream of new videos to keep your audience engaged.  However, by releasing videos that revolve around a significant event such as a performance or opening it can be more of a one time thing.  There is a great article about the marketing power of video Here.  I feel like The Soap Factory in Minneapolis has done an excellent  job producing videos that grab the audience's attention without giving away too much.   Flickr is also a great way to present images of events and performances online, and allow your audience to tag and upload their images of your organization as well.

Last.fm:

Ok, so Last.fm, ILike, and Pandora are relatively in the same boat when it comes to social networked internet radio sites, but Last.fm seems to be the most popular (this week).  Users are able to create profiles that allow them to search for friends and groups that may have the same taste in music and create personalized "stations" and playlists that others can listen to and discover.

Orchestras are able to claim their profile on Last.fm, post basic information about the organization and upload music that listeners will be able to stream online.  Your organization will also be able to set up a group much in the same way as Facebook and LinkedIn, that will allow your fans to participate in discussion and comment about your organization.

This is also a great forum to post information about upcoming concerts and events.  Users are notified about events based on their proximity to the venue, and you can add direct links to ticketing sites.  This site isn't just for Orchestras and indi rock bands, if your arts organization hosts performances during openings and other events it may be a good idea to start a profile, and post event information about the artists that will be playing your event.

More More More:

This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything that is out there.  There are an innumerable amount of social networks cropping up specifically for artists.  For instance, Peter Vikstrom commented on Wednesday's post about Cultgrid, which I haven't had the chance to explore fully, but looks like an good performing arts social network.  There are Blogs such as the SITI group blog that are an excelent source for information pertaining to performing arts.  And this awesome thing called CrowdFire, that just boggles the mind.

If you have come across a valuable source of information or an interesting social network pertaining to the arts, please feel free to leave a link in the comments below.

Performing Arts' New Media Opportunities part 1 of 2

As traditional print media's coverage of performing arts and the arts in general continues to decline and audiences across the board start to adopt social networking sites, it may be time for your organization to strongly consider updating your website and starting to utilize a new set of tools to get the word out about your organization.

I realize that I may be preaching to the choir at this point, and other people have recently addressed this, mainly due to the release of Global Faces and Networked Places A Nielsen report on Social Networking’s New Global Footprint earlier this month.  The report shows that social networking has now surpassed Email usage, and is currently the fastest growing sector of online use.  This demonstrates how drastically the way that people are using the web is changing.  It is moving from an information based, Google search oriented "Super phone book" to more of a community that relies upon members for word of mouth updates about events and information.

This means that the reasons people are visiting your organization's website are shifting from trip planning (directions, hours of operation, finding a place to eat/hotel) to engagement and becoming involved with the real life community centered around your brick and mortar building.

So, everyone is utilizing these social networking platforms to stay informed about their day to day lives, which creates some opportunities to get your organization's message across above the din of traditional marketing and the other media that is out there.

I'm going to briefly outline a few of these tools and how your organization may be able to utilize them to inform your target audience, as well as maintain healthy relationships with your existing community.

Facebook:

I briefly touched on Facebook's updated Pages features Here, but it may be useful to give a brief overview.  Facebook is a social networking site that allows your organization to create a "Page."  The Page exists much like a user profile in that you can post basic information about your organization, send event invitations for upcoming performances and exhibitions to people who have become friends of your organization, and update your audience about current events and offerings.  It also has the ability for you to aggregate any blog feed that your organization may have, and update your fans when a new blog has been posted.

There is one very important issue that I cannot stress enough at this point.  Do not approach Facebook from a purely Marketing perspective. Audiences are quick to selectively tune out organizations that they feel are just trying to sell them something.  As an Arts Organization it is better to focus on audience engagement, informing people about upcoming events and cultural offerings like classes or discussions, and maintaining a dialogue about your organization.  Facebook audiences prefer to be informed about an event or offering, not to have it sold to them.

Blogs:

Should your organization have a blog, and if so what approach should your organization take?  Well, if your only reason is because Johnny Awesome's arts organization down the street is doing it, then probably not.  Nina Simon, author of the Museum 2.0 blog, breaks down the blogging conundrum in exquisite detail Here.  She breaks down the why and the how of an institutional blog.  Before allocating time and resources for  the production of a blog first think about it's relevancy to your readers.  Who will be reading this, and what is the desired outcome?  That question is the best place to start.

Twitter:

For as much as I have railed against Twitter, on an institutional level I recognize how useful it can be is.  Twitter is officially everywhere, and I'll admit to drinking the Kool-Aid.  We've posted time and again about Twitter and how arts organizations can be utilizing this tool to inform your followers of what is going on at the organization.  Recently though, I have been relying upon Twitter to stay abreast of current events among peers within the Arts Management field by following people such as:

Maryann Devine and Jeffrey @ the MF and the Brooklyn Museum

Yelp:

There is so much information available to us at any given moment that people are now relying upon social constructs and taste makers to filter what is out there.  Beyond asking friends on Facebook or on Twitter for help in finding something interesting to do, or a place to eat or go on a date, Yelp provides candid reviews of just about any business broken down by location.  This happens to include an entire Arts and Entertainment category, so depending upon the city, your audience may already be posting reviews about your organization online.  Yelp presents a good forum to address customer service issues by responding to negative comments, and it may be a good idea to upload some current photos and make sure that all of your information is correct.

Continued in part 2, I will present a few more tools that performing arts organizations should be aware of.

Friday fun Links

Here are some links that have been keeping me completely distracted from work today.

The tangential path of online research does produce gems every once in a while. Even if it provides proof that I've been scooped.... Twice, that's what I get for not checking Google reader for a few days.

As an update to the reasons to own an iPhone blog post, the Brooklyn Museum is set to release an iPhone App which looks amazing. Look for it in the app store in the coming weeks, and while you're there download some interviews with Jeff Koons and Louise Bourgeois from the Tate's ITunes U.

In other news Shepard Fairey countersues the AP, and flie sharing gurus at the Pirate Bay are found guilty. Which makes this whole copyright mess even more complicated.

A more detailed post concerning Performing Arts and New Media is in the works... regardless of the aforementioned scooping so stay tuned.

Early Adopters: The Art world of Second Life

Second Life has been receiving a lot of press recently as an alternative Virtual Reality Art Market.  The New York Times recently released an interview with Painter and Second Life Art Star, Filthy Fluno that chronicled the artist's use of Second Life and how it helps him to sell his paintings in the real world.

By mirroring his real world gallery space in Second Life, Filthy Fluno, the avatar of artist Jeffrey Lipsky, is able to expand his viewing audience worldwide beyond the four walls of his real world gallery space.  Jeffrey creates his artwork in real life using oil paint and pastels on canvas, and is able to digitally insert his paintings into Second Life for exhibition.  He is capitalizing on the community within Second Life to market himself to potential customers and make connections within this virtual world with event promoters and party planners.

In a recent e-mail conversation, Mr Lipsky said,

"Second Life is allowing tech savvy artists to circumnavigate many of the RL challenges in getting their artworks in front of the right people and institutions...customers, galleries, peers, and international audiences. SL is also being used as a platform to create new forms of interactive cyberarts and live performance experiences. My Real Life artwork is inspired by online virtual world cultures, people, and events.  This is quite important aspect of why my artwork is able to blur the boundaries of "cyberart" and "traditional" art. "

The Second Life Art World is steadily increasing, with upwards of 600 confirmed art galleries as of March 2009, according to the Second life Art World Market Report. The PDF file available at the bottom of the Market Report page is an excellent source of information about the current state of the art world within Second Life.

The academic world has also begun to explore Second Life.  Nettrice Gaskins, an artist and educator at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and on the board of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture points out a recent exhibition within Second Life at the 322 Mixed Reality Gallery where arts education students at Penn State University created a virtual exhibition as part of a visual culture and educational technology course.  She also brought up an interesting project entitled No Matter, where she is collaborating with Boston Arts Academy to create a interdisciplinary project for their engineering program.  25 builders and artists are commissioned to create art objects  in second life based upon "Imaginary Objects" such as The Time Machine or Schrödinger’s Cat, which are then re-created as 3-d paper models.  The objects exist both in the real world, as these paper models, and the virtual world within Second Life.

Along with visual arts, the performing arts have found a steady foothold within Second Life.  Music Island is quickly becoming a significant Second Life destination for classical and contemporary music performances.  Created by Linda Rogers and receiving around 2,000 visitors every month, Music Island provides a virtual performance venue for Second Life artists where avatars of the actual musicians perform on stage.

This is by no means the only music destination within Second Life.  The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra built the art deco Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in Second Life and hosted its first concert there in September 2007.  Unlike Music Island, they are using recorded digital video instead of musician avatars for their performances.

In a recent conversation, Linda Rogers expressed that it is useful to think of the immersive environment of Second Life not as just a corner of the internet, but the next step in the evolution of electronic communication.  She stated that the real time, live and synchronous nature of a 3-D virtual environment allows for more audience interaction and creates a sense of occasion at gallery openings, concerts, and exhibits that just does not exist within the flat online world.  Avenues are being created to do everything from allowing artists to create virtual movie sets for machinama, to bringing together an international community of both artists and audiences that help to broaden artistic perspective and foster collaboration.

With the increase in the use of Second Life, I think that we may begin to see more and more alternative online three dimensional social environments crop up that are condusive to the production and exhibition of art, especially as processor speeds continue to increase and the prices for high end graphics cards start to fall.

Yet another reason to own an iPhone

If you have been to the Mattress Factory recently to see the new Thaddeus Mosley exhibition, you may have noticed that the title cards and some of the minimal signage have these intricate symbols on them. What you're seeing is a two dimensional bar code called a QR code that can be used to access information via your mobile internet enabled devices such as an iPhone or Blackberry.

The code on the image above for instance, contains a link to a Youtube video of Thaddeus Mosley discussing the placement of large scale works within the gallery space.

Once you are in the gallery you can text QRCODE to 41411 to receive a simple walk through that tests to see if your phone is compatible with the suggested reader. The BeeTagg reader supports over 50 types of mobile devices and is available as an iPhone application as well.

After you have the reader installed you can access information from signage posted throughout the gallery space. Much like the guide by cell program, there is no proprietary equipment for the museum to pay for beyond the fabrication of the signage and developing the web content. However unlike a guided tour, this allows visitors to explore the space and access information that they are interested in when they want to.

Director of PR + Social Media, Jeffrey Inscho was kind enough to give me a guided tour on Thursday and pointed out some of the kinks that he is still working out. While most of the QR codes bring up URLs on your mobile device, some of them are text only which makes the codes much more dense. This can make it more difficult to take an accurate enough picture for your phone to recognize and decode the data. The smallest that the QR codes can be printed and still be read by most of the camera-phones on the market is about 1.5" square. So the text only cards may end up being replaced with a URL of the text to help ensure that they can be read. Shadows also tend to cause some issues while taking pictures, so you have to watch where you stand.

For the recent Predrive event, before they had installed the signage in the gallery, the Mattress Factory included a QR tag on their advertisement in the City Paper and received around 72 hits, which was more than Jeffrey had expected. Over the course of the exhibition the Mattress Factory will be able to monitor which tags receive the most hits, and get a feel as to how people are using the signage when visiting the museum.

As of right now, the Mattress Factory is the only museum in the United States that is currently using QR tags within the exhibition space, but the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Australia has been using them for a a while and have outlined many of the issues that have cropped up in an amazingly detailed step by step guide.

Jeffery stressed that this was an experiment and an effort to help reduce the amount of printed gallery guides they use. It is not a permanent replacement for the printed material, but as the technology becomes more prevalent the QR codes will provide more in depth interaction and information to the visitors.

As of right now the Mattress Factory plans on continuing to use this new technology for future exhibitions and already has some just flat out amazing ideas on how to incorporate it into their Annual Garden Party but I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Best arguement thus far as to why I should update my phone from the bottom of the line Nokia I'm using.

I just dont Twitterstand

Today I keep catching myself freaking out about living in the future.  I'm honestly intimidated by the amount of information that is available to me at any given time, and I'm having a bit of future shock about how social networking may be changing society, group dynamics and how people communicate with one another.

Case in point

Between researching how artists are using Second Life, (yes artists use Second Life) and how new Smartphone applications are allowing us to access more and more information no matter where you are, I feel like it is becoming increasingly difficult to unplug.  The word Smartphone for instance brings up visions of a "Logan's Run-esque" dystopian future in my mind, but that could be because I watched a lot of Sunday afternoon science fiction growing up.

As arts professionals we need to remember that all of these new technologies should function as tools, either for communication or research, or even to help in the production of art.  It can be pretty easy to become inundated with learning the minutia of a new tool, or even seduced by the bright new shininess of it, but we can't all become slaves to the Facebook, or become so fixated that we Twitter our lives away without getting anything done.

Facebook is leading the charge of a societal change much in the same way that the cell phone did way back in the mid 90's (post Zack Morris phone, pre Razr).  It has gotten to the point that it is almost a necessity.  As Farhad Manjoo, the technology columnist at Slate, pointed out, "The site has crossed a threshold—it is now so widely trafficked that it's fast becoming a routine aide to social interaction, like e-mail and antiperspirant. It's only the most recent of many new technologies that have crossed over this stage."

We are just beginning to see how society is changing because of these new online applications, and the art world is no exception. So over the next week I'll be exploring how artists have carved out an alternative space for exhibition and performance art in Second Life, and showing you what your Smartphone can do for you next time you visit a museum.

So until then, try to go outisde while it is still nice.  If you're here in Pittsburgh, it's one of the 15 sunny days we get a year so you don't want to waste it.

Youtube Symphony Orchestra

Back in December, Brad posted an article about the call for entries for the Youtube Symphony Orchestra I'd like to post an update.

Google held an open call for musicians from around the world where users were asked to upload video auditions to be judged by a jury of professional musicians from the London Symphony and the Berlin Philharmonic.  This short list of musicians was then opened up for Youtube viewers to vote on to decide the winners.

Well, the votes are in, and on April 15th over 90 musicians from 30 different countries will be flown to New York City to perform at Carnegie Hall for the first ever crowd sourced symphony orchestra, that will be conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

The Youtube Symphony Orchestra will be playing “Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica,” by composer Tan Dun (of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero fame). Tan Dun has been providing continuing online video master classes to help prepare the musicians for their upcoming performance, including video of him silently conducting each section of the orchestra and staring directly into the camera.

The project has drawn an amazing amount of interest from participants.  After being announced on December 1st nearly 3,000 auditions had been uploaded from 71 countries by February.  This seems like a really interesting way to get younger people involved and interested in classical music, as well as pointing out what can be accomplished as technology continues to shrink the size of the globe.

Blogging on the Shoulders of Giants

Creative Commons licenses provide the ability to modify the terms of the copyright on your intellectual property.

Some times Copyright can be too restrictive when you would like to share your work with the world.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Creative Commons licensing, this video helps to explain some of the ways in which it allows someone to publish their work somewhere in between All rights reserved and No rights reserved. This method of copyright allows the creator of the work to decide how it can be used by others, if it can be used commercially, sampled, remixed, or built upon.  By using a Creative Commons License creators are able to maintain some rights while allowing others greater access to the work than the regular Copyright would allow.

FairShare is a free online application that allows you to track the usage of your creative commons licensed intellectual property, making it possible for people all around the world to reuse content while still attributing it back to the original creator.  Currently FairShare works for any text based content that is available to the public via RSS feeds.  This means any blog posts, essays, cookbooks, and anything as long as it is text and available as via RSS.  According to Plagiarism Today's Jonathan Bailey, FairShare Developer Attributor is also gauging interest in a FairShare for photos and videos as a possibility for a future service that would allow users to track the use of images and other media beyond just text content.

FairShare begins by asking you to choose from a list of available Creative Commons Licenses.

• Attribution
• Attribution Non-Commercial
• Attribution No Derivatives
• Attribution Share Alike
• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives
• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

Once you've registered your blog or other RSS feed, FairShare searches to find instances of your content on other sites, and then displays the different pages that have reused your work and how that reuse of your content compares to your license conditions.  The sites using your content are displayed in your FairShare feed that can then be accessed through a feed reader such as Google Reader, or any number of other RSS readers.

This is an amazing new tool that will allow anyone who is concerned about how their intellectual property is being used to track and influence how that content is being shared.

As we go into the weekend, I leave you with this awesome Video Mashup, "The Mother of all Funk Chords"  that was created entirely from clips available on Youtube.

Democratizing Independent Film distribution

I know that this festival has been around for a little over a year, but I still find myself visiting their homepage.

From Here to Awesome is presenting a new method of movie distribution that relies upon online viewer votes to decide which movies will be distributed.  The festival has no submission fees, the filmmakers retain all rights to their film and filmmakers make money directly.  This film festival is bypassing a lot of the industry gatekeepers to help distribute films that audiences want to see by using a simple online social platform.

I think that it is a really amazing way for independent filmmakers to get instant feedback from their audiences as well as to talk about some of the advances in the field that are creating higher production levels on lower budgets.

Filmmaker Fritz Donnelly, creator of the movie "To the Hills 2," describes the current state of the film making industry and points out many of the problems inherent in the system on From Here to Awesome's Festival Blog.  The Q&A session focuses on the possible technological utopia of film making and distribution of the future, and the hope that it brings.

This festival seems to have been a great success, considering that by July 26th, the festival's 22 selected showcase films will be available online on Amazon, Vudu, Netflix, IndieFlix.com, Hereticfilms.com, Hulu, Joost, Cacchi, and Vuze.  Recent theatrical screenings have also taken place in San Francisco, Boston, and London, as well as over 25 guerrilla drive-in screening events.

I can see that the future of independent and documentary film distribution will have the tendancy to become more democratized as festivals like From Here to Awesome create more of an online marketplace, and the costs of quality production start to come down.  The prices of cameras and editing software are reaching a point where they are accessable to more and more people with a story to tell.

Social Media as Alternative Exhibiton Space

Myspace has long been a mecca for musicians who are looking to get the word out and start a following,  but until recently visual artists have not capitalized on the aspects social networking with the same fervor.

This is beginning to change as visual artists are now using this new medium as a way around established gatekeepers, creating open alternative arts spaces online. Ever since discovering Miranda July's Learning to Love You More in undergrad I've been interested in crowd sourced art projects, and with new social mediums like Facebook and Twitter, artists are now able to easily create a community that is interested and involved in their artwork.

Matt Held, a Brooklyn based painter, started a Facebook group in order to create a pool of images to paint from by utilizing his friends' profile pictures.  His Facebook group, "I'll have my Facebook portrait painted by Matt Held" has sense grown exponentially.

Matt explained, "I have always painted from photos and was having a complete painters block. I needed an exercise in skin tone and did one of my wife from her profile. We put the group up and I thought maybe if 50 people joined, I would be able to work through the block. People liked it and as I said, this quick communication has proved true, there are nearly 3,400 people in the group now. It's been a really great tool, really great!"

Matt has recently completed his 37th portrait in the four months since beginning this project, and is looking forward to exhibiting all 200.  Social media is quickly creating a rich creative playground for visual artists to explore, and Matt is realizing how large the demand is for creative projects online.

"It's a perfect vehicle to combine mediums with technology and connect with other artists, gallery owners, curators, critics, editors, etc. very quickly. Facebook is set up so perfectly for that and now as other sites like Twitter broaden their user base, this level of instant communication with people around the world - not via the news, but from the mouths of people - it's just an inexhaustible resource."

Outside of the standard Facebook/Myspace/Twitter sites, artists are creating their own networks.   Myartspace and the Brooklyn Arts Project are both new social networks for creative artists that capitalize on the accessability of the internet, and the networking opportunities that can be created for artists.

These sites both have an ongoing blog of current events, as well as user submitted blogs.  Curators are invited to post calls for artists, and on the Brooklyn Arts Project site there is an online store where you can purchase framed art prints of featured artwork. These cites are creating a depth of relevant content as well as a definitive sense of community that is important to any group of artists.

Some galleries are also using their websites as interesting alternative exhibition spaces.  20X200 is a small gallery space on Manhattan's Lower East Side that releases limited edition art prints at incredibly low prices.  Jen Bekman has made a name for herself by making art available to everyone.

(limited editions × low prices) + the internet = art for everyone

The site introduces two new artworks every week, one photograph and one work on paper.  They are available in three sizes that vary in price from $20 for a small print, to $200 for the largest size.

In the days/weeks/years to come, visual artists will continue to find new ways of utilizing the web to create interactive and crowd sourced projects as well as to venture beyond the pristine white walls of the gallery and create new avenues for audience engagement.

I agree with Matt Held when he said "One of the things I have noticed in the past few weeks are more and more artists doing different things. One artist updated her status every 60 seconds for 16 hours as a means of opening dialogue about self exposure, narcissism, social controls, etc. Another is trying to put together a large group, 500 people, to do a massive tweet at the same time with super secret instructions. I am quite certain that we are just seeing the beginnings of the exploration on the creative use of social networks as an artistic platform."

Going Facebook Crazy

If you haven’t noticed, Facebook has changed its homepage layout, and a lot of the features available to user profiles are now also available for Pages.

I've spent the better part of this week fooling around with the new layout and features that Facebook has made available on their Pages, and trying to make heads or tails out of what is being communicated to our "fans," when it is being communicated, and how. The biggest change to Pages has been the new Wall and Stream tabs as well as the ability to send Status Updates from your page.

So, Yay for all the new toys…now what do we do with them?

The Wall allows users to post comments, just like on a profile, and ends up being the home for a large portion of user generated content for your Page.  The Stream tab similarly aggregates any changes that you've made to the page such as adding blog postings, links, events, etc..  Fans of your page are then notified when you update or change anything on the profile automatically.  There in lies a problem.  It's not THE problem, but it's one of them.  I understand that it is good to update fans when changes are made to the Page, it has the potential to create a lot more active discussion and real-time interaction, but it also has the ability to overwhelmingly spam users about our Page.  Will users really want to know about every single time we upload a new picture, or post an interesting link?

Some of the same issues arise when it comes to the Status Update feature.  In a lot of ways the Status Update is similar to a Twitter feed, so how do we keep the communication relevant and engaging without being perceived as a pest?  Since updates are being shared real-time with users, it is becoming more and more important to keep the communication on a level that creates interest without turning fans off with too much information.

The new tabbed layout also presents some interesting questions.  The tabs generally consist of the wall, an info tab, a discussion tab, and a Boxes tab, but the Boxes tab seems to be a catch all for applications that don't seem to fit anywhere else, it could very easily be called "other" or "stuff."  Even in Facebook's example page of their product guide, the Boxes tab doesn't seem to be fleshed out.  So this leaves me wondering how to best use available applications to relate to our users, or if this tab will end up being the neglected big box of stuff that nobody cares about tab.

Because these changes are new, it is still uncertain how either organizations or fans will react and start to use these new tools to communicate.  It seems that no matter what, facebook will continue to occupy way too much of my time online.  And now I need to hunt down a decent podcast application for facebook to fill up that Boxes tab.

All the news that's fit to Tweet

It seems that over the past week Twitter has made it into the headlines for both being an amazing new communication tool, and how ridiculously it is being used.  This past Monday on the Daily Show John Stewart pointed out some of the effects that Twitter has on our perception of both the news media and congress.  While many members of Congress were Twittering through Obama’s most recent speech, the inane messages seemed to detract from the gravity of the event. As John Stewart said, “..these messages don’t enlighten or inform, it’s a gimmick that actually lessens the credibility of institutions in desperate need of authority." Regardless of the method of communication, why should we care unless you have something meaningful to say. Both the London Times and The Washington Post have tried to address the question as to why we twitter, only to come to the conclusion that we have a terribly underdeveloped sense of self and need to be reassured that we exist. From the London Times...

The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. "Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It's a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity."

"We are the most narcissistic age ever," agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. "Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won't cure it."

This is generally why I can't stand most Twitter feeds.  Yes it is a new and powerful means of communication, but it seems to me that right now it is primarily being used as a posturing mechanism to help aging organizations appear youthful and with it.  The majority of the Twitter feeds out there are either devoid of content, incredibly trivial or mundane.  They only communicate that someone exists and not much more.

That being said, there are some really amazing ways that Twitter is being used.  Organizations that understand the importance of real time communication with their audiences are pushing the boundaries with Twitter and capitalizing on the unique ways that they can receive audience feedback.

The Twitter Art feed at the Brooklyn Museum is part their new 1stfans program, and allows members access to tweets by contemporary artists every month, and has featured works by artists such as Mary Temple and An Xiao that utilize the social feedback aspect of Twitter.   An Xiao's piece was about Morse code and the history of instant communication in which 1st fans were asked to feed to tweet using Morse code, while Mary Temple's piece Currency provides a daily link to a drawing made from current news articles about important world leaders in the media.

Conferences are also beginning to utilize Twitter Back Channels to allow their audiences to discuss the content of a presentation in real time without disrupting the event.  This is in essence what we tend to get scolded for in school, passing notes, making fun of a presenter's overuse of the word "nascent," and whispering to a neighbor about the content of the presentation.  More often than not, these conversations are being spurred on by the speaker, and Twitter is creating a real-time avenue for discussion that is centered around the speaker's presentation.  This is creating a non-invasive avenue for audience participation and places the focus of these events back on the community of people attending instead of just sitting at the feet of the keynote speaker.

These organizations are utilizing Twitter feeds for audience engagement and a way for inducing a flattened level of communication.   The Brooklyn Museum also seems to be using the Twitter feed as an interesting source of revenue, as 1stfans membership costs $20 a year.

I can't help to think that it might be useful way to get instant feedback on the progress of projects and tasks at work, especially if certain employees are telecommuting or out of the office.  And the fact that updates can be sent by phone, allows updates to happen when access to a computer is limited.

Share what you think about Twitter, and some of the possible real world applications of using Twitter for audience (or employee) engagement in the comments below.