The finalists that received funding by NESTA/ACE from the Digital Innovation fund were announced recently. If you missed the news, details of the successful applicants and the projects are below.

Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) with Videojuicer and The Arts Collective (£75,920)BAC is proposing to pilot a digital version of its acclaimed 'Scratch' programme. This will allow artists to share ideas online and engage in a creative dialogue with the public to develop those ideas.

Exhibition Road Cultural Group with the Dickens Museum and Seren Partners  (£70,200)
This group of cultural organisations will create a new app that will allow users to go on a digital cultural journey across London. The first journey will be 'DigiDickens', a journey across the capital inspired by the life, work and interests of Charles Dickens.

Imperial War Museum (IWM) with Knowledge Integration and University College London (£84,500)IWM and partners will develop a system that will enable the interpretation, discussion, collection and sharing of cultural experiences with, and between, audiences. This data-driven project will have in-gallery, online and mobile applications, which will augment and spread museum collections through social media and digital interaction.

London Symphony Orchestra with Aurora Orchestra and Kodime(£67,270)The London Symphony Orchestra will create and test mobile marketing and ticketing, allowing students to purchase discounted concert tickets through mobile apps. The apps will also use location data to show events nearby and allow students to share comments via social media.

New Art Exchange with Artfinder (£54,000)New Art Exchange in Nottingham will work with Artfinder to develop a digital portal for dialogue and exchange which allows gallery and artists to upload, sell and exchange their art work, as well as for audiences to vote on and virtually curate art programmes.

Punchdrunk  with MIT Media Lab (£80,120)Immersive theatre company Punchdrunk and MIT Media Lab will merge theatre and gaming on an online platform, that will partner live audiences with online participants. This will be piloted for its critically acclaimed show Sleep No More, which is currently running in New York.

The Sage Gateshead plus Manchester Camerata, Aurora, Berwick Maltings, Alnwick Playhouse and Durham Gala with Videojuicer and Aframe (£57,397)The Sage proposes to explore how digital technology can help orchestras and venues find new audiences and income streams. The project will broadcast live concerts through a range of distribution channels and into a network of venues across Britain. The aim is to reach new audiences that are younger and who live in more rural areas that previously would not have had access to live performances.

Site Gallery working with Lighthouse and Caper (£80,000)
Sheffield's Site Gallery will embed small teams of digital designers and developers in arts organisations, and see how this changes organisational thinking and develops more interesting digital ideas.

Digital Seminar - App Masterclass

This week I attended an excellent case study, as part of the Arts Council/BBC Building Digital Capacity for the Arts programme, about Faber & Faber's The Waste Land App for the iPad. It is a beautifully done App that features the poem in text but also read by various people including Alec Guinness, Fiona Shaw (voice and film), T. S. Elliot and others, supported by notes, video interviews, the manuscript and archive photos. What really impressed was the immense care that had gone into the build. The development took a year and was costly but the App quickly recovered its costs and moved into profit as well as generating very positive reviews. An App like this based on a text could have been put together without much thought for supporting material but this one truly enhances the pleasure of reading the poem. The seminar itself was very detailed and the participants from Faber and Faber and the developers Touch Press were remarkably generous and open with information about the process, budgets and what they had learned during the App's development.

The whole seminar was filmed and will be made available on the website.

You Tube - how to get millions of views in a matter of days

It has been a strange few weeks. Two artists that are associated with Sadler's Wells have received hundreds and thousands of views on YouTube.

The first one was Marie Chouinard who performed her show at Sadler's Wells in 2010. The video excerpt we put on YouTube has proved very popular, and as we leave them up after the show is over, has generated over 370,000 views since May 2010. It was surprise however when someone copied our video (complete with Sadler's Wells ident and end card) and put it up on YouTube with a new title. In less than a month it had over 1,670,000 views. Was this because of an a growing interest in French Canadian contemporary dance you ask? I'm afraid not, instead I suspect it was largely down to the new title. "I've got the weirdest boner right now"* I admit the clip is pretty unusual and it has been interesting seeing the comments. Quite a number have referenced Silent Hill and it says something that many have said it is the freakiest thing they have ever seen on YouTube (not an achievement to sniffed at). Of course the question you always get about video and YouTube is the impact it has on driving traffic to your own site. A new case study for audience development? Well I can report that in two weeks we had 33 people searching the site for the term "boner" and 25 searching for the word "crutches".


The second clip that has been hugely busy has been the one that compares the work of Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker with Beyonce's video for her single Countdown. This video has nearly had 1,700,000 views in 10 days (plus many other views for re posted videos). Interestingly the comments have been less coherent or measured for this clip. The debate on plagiarism vs. homage has received a lot of coverage with opinions divided but what was interesting was how many Bey fans have come out and said "What? My girl's been caught again!" as apparently she has previous form in this area. Reminds me of the whole Michael Jackson ripping off Pina Bausch Rite of Spring scandal...

De Keersmaeker is back with us next month; so will Sadler's Wells be rammed with Beyonce fans who have booked to see the woman who is one of her "inspirations", methinks not but everyone is welcome. If her fan club contact me I'll even set up a special discount code.

*This video may be down by the time you look for it. If it is, just watch our clip and imagine it with the new title at the top. Interestingly the phrase "I have the weirdest boner right now" is a known web phrase. Apparently it originated in a tv show and has since become used in situations where an image appears accidentally phallic or an erection would be inapropriate. Through 2011 the phrase has grown in popularity on the web (the link above actually showed the webstats!) and this video certainly must be adding to that.

Steve Jobs RIP

RIP Steve Jobs. To be honest as a marketeer I had to admire the man. His impact was immense. I know the technogeeks have always been snobbish about his products, but they deliberately and sulkily under estimated the huge influence he had on technology and the general public. Perhaps other people did develop products earlier but they did not create markets in the way Apple have. People may go on about walled gardens and the like but the fact is he took technology and truly turned it into culture, creating objects that are pleasurable to hold and use, that focus on what the public want to do (even if they did not know it) and that don't need to be explained with a hundred page instruction manual.

Every time Apple brought out something new like the iPad an "expert" would always say, "I'm not sure it is has a point. I don't see people buying this." But the public did, in their millions. Great marketing is about creating demand, Apple have done that and where they have gone the rest of the industry rushes to catch up.

I bought my first Mac years ago in PC world. I was just about to buy a replacement cheap PC and was queuing to pay when I saw an iMac. I had a play and was hooked. Yes it cost more but I liked the fact I was getting a computer for my home not some ugly beast made for an office. Importantly it would do what I wanted straight out of the box, organise my photos and music. And what a box it was. Gorgeous heavy board that provided a thrill to open that I have not had since I first pulled the shrink wrap off a record as a child.

And that brings us to music. The iPod is the greatest music device ever (except for the turntable). The first MP3 player I ever owned had a 32mb drive. Later ones always seemed annoying to use. I now carry 80 gigs in my pocket, in a simple, elegant device. The arrival of CDs never stopped me buying vinyl, but to be honest digital storage of music has made me rethink.

The iPhone may be a poor phone but really, who uses an iPhone primarily to make phone calls? If I go away travelling I take an old Nokia which has a battery life that lasts weeks. To be honest when you can  text, email, tweet and update facebook so easily actually holding it to your ear and speaking into it seems a bit of a bizarre throwback to another age.

And finally, like everyone else I ever meet speaking at events I have a MacBook which serves me well. But that still does not mean I don't want an iPad...

I think the point about technology vs. culture is worth repeating. The PC is technology, the Mac and its associated products are Culture in all senses. Their reach and impact on people. Their long established link with creativity. Their focus on elegant simple design. The intuitive nature of their controls.

Apple famously once booted Jobs out of his own company over a disagreement over direction. He returned and took them to greater heights. Let's hope the people left in charge understand what he added to the company and emulate it.

Turn it off!

It has been ages since my last post. Have I been away, no, not really. Just getting on with life with a baby. So no blogging, no browsing the web, a little bit of online shopping for DVDs, even Linus has been lax at updating his facebook account. But life goes on. Sometimes I wonder if we should just turn all this internet stuff off.