The site was built by TAK! who explain at length what it’s all about including the rather innovative Program of Events, the evolution of which was blogged here.
Given this is a rather new take on a gallery site Dom of TAK is looking for feedback.
Internet
Substrakt has posted an update of their activities which includes the announcement of the new Jibbering website for the Moseley-based record shop and cafe.
The latter has been keenly anticipated in these parts as Jibbering is an interesting and vital force on the local music scene, something which until now hadn’t been reflected online. The site now opens up all their activities to view including their regular events (frequently at the Hare and Hounds but also all over the place) and services like equipment hire and event management. And, of course, the record shop itself. If you were wondering how an indie music store can survive these days this is a good model to watch.
Some bits of the site are still being padded out, as you’d expect for something that will evolve and grow over time, including the Gallery section but I picked up a flyer the other day informing that Sami Green is the current exhibitee with a show running from Nov 1st to Dec 5th. I don’t know exactly what’ll be exhibited (and, more importantly, for sale) but she does these wonderful sculptures:
If I was going to go to just one event at the Flip Animation Festival (and remember this is me I’m talking about not necessarily you) then it’d be Animation in the YouTube Generation on Friday 2nd November from 3.30-6pm.
This panel discussion will look at the impact of new and emerging online platforms and tools and will ask what the opportunities are for animators and filmmakers and can online distribution and exhibition lead to professional commissions? The panel comprises an exiting line up of animators who have had a significant impact online and who mix this ‘amateur’ work with professional commissions: Greg McLeod, from the Brother’s McLeod who are responsible for the recent Skittles ad campaign and whose ‘Spamland’ has received nearly 1m views on You Tube; Lasse Gjertson, whose films have had a huge impact on You Tube, particularly ‘Amateur which has received more than 6m views and 6 honours, including most viewed all time; Katy Davis, who has been shortlisted for the MyMovie Mashup competition and has been a feature profile on MySpace and produced the award winning short animation, Gone Fishing. The panel will also include Ana Kronschnabl: author of Plug in Turn on: A Guide to Internet Filmmaking and is the founder of plugincinema.com. The panel will be chaired by Kate Taylor who has worked in short film distribution and exhibition since 1998 and has been involved in a number of leading festivals and agencies, including Kinofilm, onedotzero, British Council and is co-founder of the London Short Film Festival.
While this has the potential to be full of people who don’t know anything spouting off about “user generated content” and coming up with strategies to make the wonderful mess of YouTube into something resembling the old ways (sorry, I get carried away) I have a feeling this will be rather more interesting and useful than that, mainly because of the appearance of Lasse Gjertson who does stuff like this:
There is, of course, loads more going on over the three days of the festival. Check the site for details or pick up a program about the place.
Over the weekend I had two separate conversations with promoters (Al of Curates Egg and Rich from Project X) about MySpace, specifically how posting flyers into the comments of everyone in your Friends list is possibly the most tedious and long winded task ever inflicted on a human. Initially I smiled the smile of pity and assumed nothing could be done, but then it struck me. While automating this might not be possible (to my knowledge anyway – if there’s a third party tool out there do leave a comment) it can be speeded up a bit.
Heres what you need.
- The Firefox browser.
- The Greasemonkey plugin – this allows you to run scripts which change the contents of web pages.
- In this case we’re using the MySpace custom style remover script.
When enabled this removes all the junk people throw on their profiles and, most importantly, neutralises any music or video meaning you can open lots of profiles at once and not kill your computer.
Now go to you’re Friends listing page and open 10 or 20 of them in tabs at a time. While you still need to enter each comment seperately it should be much quicker now.
Any other tips on making MySpace less of a bastard? Leave a comment.
BIAD, the Birmingham Institute for Art and Design at UCE BCU, has a new website.
There are a couple of nice things about this. The most obvious is the extensive gallery of graduates’ work which serves to show off the grads and their alma mata, though links to their sites would make it really useful. The second is the news page which appears to cover a whole range of activities connected to the institute from colaborations with IKON, public lectures and events and new publications by staff.
While it might not be obvious, this new site is pretty much a blog. Indeed, it’s using Drupal, a powerful free content management system that understands the best things about weblogs. This also means they have RSS feeds – a first for an academic website that’s ostensibly all about the PR. No idea who’s behind it all but, compared to the parent site it’s a breath of fresh air.
via Nikki Pugh
BiNS does a nice review of Birmingham FIZ which is not a mis-spelling of “fizz” but stands for Free Information Zone (yup, took me a while there too). As you probably heard in various pronouncements including the phrase “digital city” over the last couple of years, Birmingham now has a wifi network across most of the city centre. To be precise:
The deal that’s been struck enables BT Openzone to install wireless basestations across the city (I believe in lamp posts) on the condition that access to council services and local information is provided for free. To get the rest of the internet you need to pay BT. Which, while not ideal, is… we’ll it’s just not ideal full stop. But it’s what we’ve got.
These local info services are provided through the new portal, birminghamfiz.com, which is formatted to work well in mobile internet devices like Treos and iPhones. The idea is that someone out and about in Birmingham who’s looking for a restaurant or wants to know what’s showing in the cinema can get the information quickly and easilly from anywhere in town. Similarly if you’re just waiting for a bus you can have a look at job vacancies and the like.
From the creative industries perspective it’s the listings that are the key thing here. In theory everyone with a mobile internet device now has a complete What’s On in their pocket. In the pub with your mate and decide you’d like to go to a gig? Surf on over to the FIZ. Sitting in a cafe chatting about the ballet? Search on the FIZ to see what the BRB are up to. You get the idea.
Of course having only just launched the info is a bit sketchy at the moment and some of the sites aren’t ideally formatted for tiny screens (for a full technical review see BiNS) but it’s early days and they’re looking for feedback. All the details are on this Digital Birmingham page and you can email feedback to digital@servicebirmingham.co.uk.
Remember, you know your businesses and your customers better than they do. Educate them. Then hopefully in time we’ll have the wifi information service we deserve, just in time for when mobile internet devices become as common as mobile phones.
Well, would you look at that. The Custard Factory has a new website and it appears to be based around a blog! Who saw that coming? In fact it appears to be pretty influenced by this very blog in tone and style. Hmm…
Yes, I’m running it, but I’d be a fool not to plug it here. Expect a little bit of cross posting as I struggle to decide which blog gets what but it should all balance out in the end.
(And for the record I think I’ve hit my quota limit for blog running. Happy to help out with advice though.)
Nikki Pugh mentions, in an interesting little blog post, that Midwest is shutting down. Which is a shame as I’d started to rely on that website a bit. Here’s hoping something good comes from the ashes.
383 go through their recent work over the last month which, along with their continued inroads into the restaurant website market, gives us a lead into an interesting group of folks: Annamation are a storytelling company brining “spoken word, song and characterisation to bring the age-old oral tradition of storytelling into the 21st century.” One to investigate!
Very late notice but the next Multipack meeting, for the discussion of all things web, takes place tomorrow, Sep 22nd, at the The Old Joint Stock from 2-7pm
Stef Lewandowski talks about building the events listings for the Arts Central and Feel the Heat websites.
As previously blogged, the online exhibition Ctrl-copy goes live today. There’s also a launch tonight at 6pm in The Orange Studio on Canon Street (map). If I’m awake I intend to be there.
Ctrl-copy is an online exhibition that features downloadable art by Juneau Projects, Caitlin Griffiths, Chris Hodson, Yoke and Zoom, Cheap Machines and Mike Cassidy via the Internet. Artists have submitted new work or adapted an existing work for the online environment that can be freely downloaded from the virtual space of the web into tangible and personal objects.
Ctrl-copy allows free access to download an edition of original artwork to personal computers, mobile phones, ipods, burn on to CD or print out. The site will eventually becoming a sharing site for art, as users are asked to upload mashed up versions of the art or their own art that will be available to download by others. This reflects the many-to many- broadcasting that is so common currently on the net. This availability also questions issues surrounding copyright and ownership of images on the internet.
The last bit explains the “control copy” title which as a keystroke is pretty meaningless but as a concept is quite pertinent. You see this a lot with photographers who want to embrace online distribution but are wary of people “stealing” their work, let alone using it to create new work. If this project takes off the debate around it should be pretty interesting.
There’s nothing on the site yet save a countdown with seven days to go until all is revealed on Friday 31st August. There’s a launch at The Orange Studio on Canon Street (map) on that Friday from 6-9pm, which indicates it’s a Birmingham-related projects, which is why I’m posting about it here.
Details via Midwest
As part of their ongoing work with Thomas Tallis school TAK have launched Tallis Shorts, a video / audio showcasing site for the pupil’s work.
So yeah, it’s another Flash video hosting site. Yawn-tastic. But go have a look at it. More importantly, go use it.
I’m no fan of fancy Flash interfaces but this pretty much rocks. It’s completely different to the standard YouTube / Vimeo model but still works intuitively and has all the widgets you need. (Except permalinks. They’d be nice, in an essential kinda way). It’s always nice to see cutting edge web design that actually works properly, so well done TAK.
As you might be aware, Birmingham blogger Andrew Dubber found his site rocketing to international attention when he posted an email discussion with Paul Birch of Wolverhampton-based Revolver Records. The substance of the debate was fairly daft – that as an employee of UCE Dubber should not be linking to articles that criticize the mainstream record industry – but by agreeing for the correspondence to go public Dubber essentially handed Birch a rope which he gladly used to hang himself. The story has gone global thanks to Birch being on the board of the BPI and the IFPI yet displaying an incredible lack of nous about not only the future of music but how the debate surrounding it should take place.
While enough petards have been hoisted to damage the reputation of the BPI in this matter there are a couple of observations I’d like to throw into the pot.
Firstly the name Paul Birch rang a bell somewhere so I did a bit of digging. Turns out he was the guy the Stone Roses threw paint over when he re-released a single of theirs without permission. While this doesn’t add anything to the debate it’s kinda amusing.
Secondly, and more pertinently, Birch’s record label has minimal internet presence. I’m not suggesting board membership of national and international trade organizations should be restricted to the corporations, but you’d hope that as the industry attempts to embrace the digital age its representatives would be at least vaguely aware of how it all works.
