Why stay on the 'side?
Putting the Created In Birmingham shop in the Bullring in the centre of Birmingham means that we're proud of our art.
A bug bear I have about Birmingham is creativity occurs on the fringes of the city, and often this can make us appear self deprecating. It's almost as if were embarrassed by our artists so we push them to the outskirts. Don't get me wrong, I'm behind the redefined Eastside. In fact I wrote the brochure's main copy. But where I struggled was working out how to make art accessible and appealing in description, without appearing to trivialise or belittle 'the art.' A picture paints a thousand words, I just wanted people to visit Eastside and make up their own minds. Hopefully, many will this weekend.
The great thing about CiB shop's centrality is that people can check it out, with very little effort. If this shop was based in Digbeth, for example, they wouldn't have a fraction of the footfall. Take a look at this large and diverse mix of people in this 30 minute sample (recorded by me at 11am on a Thursday).
Okay, Pete Ashton in particular acknowledges it's "in a shopping centre" so there are a few pieces that might be too leftfield for this consumer-centric audience. But its strong centre-stage presence is great exposure for all artists adorning the walls and shelves. And intrinsically Created In Birmingham features independent artists creating original pieces.
Besides wouldn't it be great if when the City Of Culture judges get off the train and the first place they pop into is this shop?
Home Of Metal audio and mapping
I'm fascinated by the capabilities of Geolocation so I decided as part of my multimedia portfolio I'd play around with some audio which was recorded on a Home Of Metal tour, hosted by Chris Phipps in March 2009.
To Vimeo Or Not To Vimeo
For my first Multimedia Assignment I'm experimenting with video. But even putting out short chunked segments takes a while to edit, and even longer to upload. In my Production Lab work there's been a lot of discussion about which platform is better, Vimeo or YouTube. Certainly from a time perspective, YouTube is much quicker to upload. It took me a few hours to get three three-minute clips up last night. With Vimeo I had to leave the first clip overnight, the second took two hours this morning to upload, and I've given up on the third after it kept on dropping out.
The thing is I know Vimeo is generally considered the better platform, especially for aesthetically sensitive designers but it appears my allocation only allows me to upload on HD package a week. And besides YouTube now offers unlimited HD. For standard Vimeo there's a cap at 500Mb. Here's the two clips together, see if you can really spot the difference. For extra fun play them together.
What Village Underground can learn from the Barbican
For my MA Online Journalism I'm conducting a Production Lab placement with Village Underground, London. Following the last group Skype meeting, I thought it would be useful to do a case study on a venue that already has its online presence sorted. I managed to arrange a face to face meeting with Maryam Ashgari from the Barbican, a 28 minute edit of the meeting can be listened to below.
[audio: http://dandavies23.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/barbicanedit.mp3]But if you don't have half an hour to spare here are my conclusions.
Enhancing My Silver Skins Podcast
When I started producing my Silver Skins podcast, I was often asked whether I'd cleared the music copyright. My argument was far from comprehensive, usually involving an explanation that I always talk over the beginning and end of my tracks in traditional 'Radio 1 Top 40' style. I also mumbled that much of my music is new material which is benefiting from exposure to a niche 'older but still cool' audience.
Silver Skins is a receptacle for music that I am passionate about. The intention behind the podcast was to appeal to a generation who, like me, still loved music and refused to be knocked into any kind of middle-age music box. The passion part also has a lot linked to my ideas behind Blowback: this isn't cycnical aloof abstraction about music industry trends but genuinely wanting to play the best music I experience - and pass on that experience. I've had fans of the podcast contact me, claiming that since listening to the show, they have gone out and bought the album, or seen the musician live. I've recently discovered this opinion is shared by UK Podcasters Association and was backed up by The 2008 MCPS-PRS Podcast License.
For a while I've sided with Andrew Dubber's view on copyright, musicians should benefit from exposure rather than try and claw back the potential money they might have been lost. Nevertheless, in a world where people are illegally uploading and downloading entire movies or albums I very much doubt PRS would be interested in the one compressed track that I rabbit all over. But if the request does ever come, I will take it down.
In the mean time, I might be able to offer one further justification. I was inspired by Mixmag's excellent podcast which provides enhanced capabilities. The fact that you can click on an image if playing in iTunes, (or possibly even on iTouch or iPhone - yet to test) you could buy the track in full from the store.
With my Enhanced Silver Skins, these are all bitly short links, so I will be able to measure how many people click through to the store as a result of listening to my podcast. Hopefully my case will be strengthened by recent reports that paid for downloads have boosted music sales.
There are other enhanced treats aswell, so have fun downloading and let me know what you think of the tweaked podcast. At the moment I realise that this podcast is a bit Apple-centric so if you have any idea of how I can reproduce the same effect in PC and on other audio devices then please let me know.
You can download the enhanced Silver Skins 3 by right clicking here.
Or you can subscribe to the RSS via my archive site.