This article analyzes Ireland’s emerging position as a global cultural policy case study, focusing on the Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) program and its place within the national framework Culture 2025. While Ireland’s consensus-driven political system, strong arts advocacy networks, and history of support for artist income have enabled an ambitious, research-oriented basic income pilot, the article highlights deeper tensions within cultural policymaking. Drawing on Stephen Hadley’s concept of “cultural policy realism,” it argues that Ireland’s policies—despite their novelty—remain rooted in traditional, instrumentalist views of culture as an economic engine and national branding tool. By contrasting democratization of culture with cultural democracy, the piece situates Ireland’s model between innovation and reversion, emphasizing the need for sustained experimentation, critical evaluation, and more genuinely democratic approaches to cultural support.
This study advances Part II by translating Scopely’s strategy into an execution plan across three tracks - NPC innovation, intelligent monetization, and ethical LiveOps - supported by new evidence from a 1,159-response consumer survey, nine expert interviews (developers, influencers, and experiential professionals), and secondary industry research. Part I established the market context for AI’s disruptive potential and identified three priorities: live operations evolution, commerce optimization, and advanced player analytics. The goal of this phase is to pinpoint the highest-leverage AI applications that deepen gameplay engagement, convert payment resistance through demonstrated value, and safeguard community trust. Accordingly, Part II outlines actionable playbooks (context-aware NPCs and adaptive narratives), platform tactics (purchase-aligned mobile personalization and cross-play integration), and operational models (behavior-based matchmaking and transparency protocols) designed to drive scalable, technology-led growth while preserving the integrity of shared human play.
This study provides a comprehensive analysis for Scopely to enhance its position as a leader in interactive and mobile gaming, focusing on AI integration in live operations, in-game commerce, and player analytics. The research reveals the urgent need for gaming companies to navigate accelerated AI adoption and evolving player expectations for personalized experiences. The goal is to identify the most impactful AI applications over the next three years and strategies that maximize engagement and monetization while maintaining player trust. Significant to this goal is balancing innovation with ethical considerations, including data privacy and transparency, while recognizing AI's potential to enhance storytelling and create immersive experiences. Employing a mixed-methods approach with industry interviews, a survey of over 1,000 U.S. gamers, and secondary research, Part I establishes the foundation for understanding AI's transformative impact - setting the stage for Part II's empirical findings and strategic recommendations.
A daylight robbery at the Musée du Louvre in mid-October resulted in the theft of eight priceless pieces from the French Crown Jewels housed in the Galerie d’Apollon. The incident now serves as an in-depth analysis for arts leaders globally to confront not only external threats, like highly organized professional thieves, but also the complex, internal risk of compromised staff and the urgent need to re-evaluate their security posture, technological investment, and institutional accountability.
As immersive technologies redefine the live concert experience, artists and virtual idols alike are transforming how audiences engage with music. From Hatsune Miku’s “holographic” performances powered by projection and LED technologies to VR concerts by creators like BlackGryph0n and Gorillaz, extended reality (XR) is blurring the lines between physical and digital performance. This article explores the evolution of Vocaloid software, the artistry behind digital concerts, and the growing influence of augmented and virtual reality in live music. As AR and VR become more accessible, musicians and fans alike are discovering new ways to connect—reshaping what it means to perform, attend, and experience music in the digital age.
User Experience Designers in today’s world must discover new ways to evolve their work alongside the external challenges that they encounter. Since the Covid pandemic began, many museums have adapted their exhibits to be accessible online, allowing for continued traffic and artist exposure— from the living room couch rather than in person. How have levels of digital readiness compared to user experiences?
Through a narrative-focused approach to digital placemaking, users gain an understanding of the environment they inhabit and perhaps a sense of “home.” However, A true collective experience cannot take place when certain populations lack the access and/or ability to participate in events, particularly in a digital space. Digital inequity has been entrenched as a significant barrier to education, employment, healthcare, and commerce in the 21st century.
Language-based diversity and the related questions of physical accessibility are regularly left out of these conversations; whether conscious or not, DEI efforts in popular arts and media regularly function on the outskirts of language-based representation and accessibility. For members of minority and underrepresented demographic groups, representation in arts and entertainment not only impacts how the world sees them, but guides how they see themselves.
As issues surrounding AI and NFTs continue to come to light, conversations about ethical uses of technology become more complex. This month, we are taking a look at stories that address the issues of data privacy in AI technology, the ongoing legal battlefield of NFTs, and digital strategies in theatre.
Social media is infused into the daily lives of Gen Z and Millennials. In order to reach and meaningfully engage with IND18-35, organizations should build a thoughtful social media presence to funnel the IND18-35 community to specific content. Initially, organizations should identify existing Gen Z and Millennial parties as key stakeholders and partner with them to create interactive, promotional content on social media. The focus should be on TikTok and YouTube as 75% of survey respondents ranked one of these platforms as their primary source of short-form content.
Millennial and Gen Z consumers have forever altered the entertainment landscape. Shifts in their viewing habits are being motivated by a sense of community, increasingly short attention spans, and pragmatic decision-making spurred by coming of age in a digital and internet-driven environment. To fulfill these motivations, they have increasingly turned their attention to short-form content. this article offers insights on how and why Gen Z and Millennial consumers watch content.
The video gaming business is now a world-leading entertainment industry with nearly 180 billion U.S. dollars in market value (Statista, 2021). As more private information and in-game data are collected and utilized to support gaming, it may also threaten the safety of gamers' privacy. Therefore, it is essential for gaming companies to understand the business implications of collecting and using gamers’ private information. There have been studies that take account of the privacy landscape across industries, but privacy in the gaming industry remains less examined given its complexity and rapid recent growth.
In the past month, AI has been dominating arts news. As its role as a collaborator and partner in visual art projects grows in popularity, many question its ethics and even object to its use in the arts entirely. There’s no doubt of its benefit in certain contexts. For instance, in the area of cultural preservation projects, which may take humans much longer if unassisted by the technology. But, understandably so, there also seems to be a looming fear in the artist community that it will displace human artists. Many object to even calling AI-generated or AI-assisted art “art.” While the future is uncertain concerning the legality and ownership of such “artwork,” these conversations are important to have. And it is vital to stay informed on the various issues involving AI in art, both good and bad, to see how the law adapts.
The demand for STEM practitioners is growing in tandem with the demand for workers who are equipped to think about their social and ethical aspects. The intrinsic values of the arts, such as empathy, community, and imagination, combined with the logic of the STEM model, create a more well-rounded experience for youth. Agnes Chaves, a new media artist and founder of STEMarts Lab, advocates for the idea that STEAM education practices allow students to understand the ethics behind new technologies and their impact on nature and humanity when approaching a problem. Particularly for larger societal problems such as digital inequity, it’s crucial that students perceive themselves as caretakers of the planet and global citizens.
In late August, Jason Allen's AI-generated artwork "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" took first place in the digital category at the Colorado State Fair. One critic called it "the death of artistry." But others, like Shelly Palmer, say if he crossed a line, "we’ve been walking up to the edge for decades." Allen himself believes AI-generated art will eventually become its own category.
Today, we're looking back at some of the ways AI has been incorporated into the visual arts realm.
If you work in your organization’s management systems, how often are you caught by data that you cannot trust? The degradation of data integrity typically comes from human error (entry of data or maintenance), formatting inconsistencies, collection processing errors or data field misalignment, or, for larger companies, data breaches. This article will help clarify how to create ecosystems for data integrity and the opportunity a strong data infrastructure provides for a data-ready future.
The average theater-goer walks into a performance with their ticket stub freshly procured from the box office. An usher hands them a playbill as they find their seat. Both items are unique to the time and place of the event, and available only to those physically in attendance at the performance. These forms of memorabilia offer audiences collectible, tangible tokens to commemorate an arts experience. However, today it is common practice to take a picture of the stage from one’s seat with playbill in hand to post on social media and store in the cloud, transforming a physical token of memorabilia into a digital one.
Cryptocurrency has the potential to and is already beginning to disrupt philanthropy and the ways that nonprofit organizations collect donations. In previous eras, philanthropic innovation was spurred by “new sources of wealth,” as with John D. Rockefeller creating America’s first foundation or Bill and Melinda Gates translating his immense success in the tech revolution into global philanthropic influence in areas of “poverty, disease, and equity.” Similarly the emergence of a new class of “crypto-elite[s]” has the potential to disrupt traditional methods of philanthropy. Now, as blockchain technology and its myriad applications become more mainstream and our society becomes more crypto-curious, nonprofit organizations have an opportunity to adapt by incorporating cryptocurrency and its various tokens into their fundraising strategies.
In the visual arts, there is no guarantee that work will be preserved for any time after it has been created. While physical pieces are certainly more permanent that performances, all works are subject to deterioration and destruction. Some pieces are more susceptible, such as work made of fragile material or located in an unstable environment, but all pieces will eventually face wear and damage. Restoration is thus required in order to renew pieces to their original and/or best form. Ultimately, the goal of restoration is to safely and accurately bring pieces to their best form for study and public enjoyment. Through technology, this goal can be accomplished.
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) was ranked number one in 2022 for Artificial Intelligence Programs by U.S. News and World Report. Incorporating CMU’s AI lessons is critical for all industries but particularly those that are historically considered to be “non-technical fields.” Within these fields, the ones who thrive will be those who incorporate at least the lower levels of the stack, namely data management, but an understanding of each layer of the stack will provide industries with a road map to understand how they can increase the efficiency and output of their organization’s business processes.
In the current digital economy, privacy is elusive. In fact, much of the Internet as we know it is made up of services and practices that use data as a form of payment, without making that transaction clear. This article explores how individuals and organizations in arts enterprises can maintain better privacy and data protection for themselves and their clients using existing technology and techniques. It begins with a brief background on the state of digital privacy, and then provides into an overview of existing techniques and technologies that could be applied within the arts.
