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.