Page 100 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014to a cultural initiative, prompting others to participate too. This effect of contagion is having a great impact on the concept of “shared culture”, where users find a way to “get things done”, particularly projects that had been discounted or had seemed impossible.THE SOCIAL NETWORKS AS EXTENDERS OF THE SCOPE OF CULTURAL EXPERIENCEIn most of the museums, concerts and theatres in Spain and much of the rest of the world, one of the first things you see when you go in is a sign that says “Photography and the use of mobile phones prohibited”.Nonetheless, others have discovered it is much better to let people do it. MoMA in New York, the Louvre in Paris and the Thyssen in Madrid, in the permanent collection, are examples of this. Also, in ever more art galleries and exhibitions the visitor is explicitly invited to do so, to photograph and share their experience on social networks. The reason is that a visitor sharing in real time their picture in front of a work of art stimulates their followers to take an interest in this museum more than any institutional campaign might have done. Sharing experiences is one of the keys to the new digital culture and the question would be, “Why not take advantage of it to further disseminate culture?”. The cost is zero and the benefits might be huge.What really lies behind the prohibition on photography (apart from the dubious damage that might be caused by flashguns), is an issue of property, image rights on the pictures which, being reserved, should make it possible to sell more reproductions. The impact of this is also dubious, since no visitor’s camera will give the same quality of reproduction nor definition nor lighting, yet because of the limitation imposed by this minimum economic impact we lose the “marketing by recommendation” that any visitor might do between their hundreds or thousands of followers and friends.AC/EThe Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has taken the opposite course, digitalising and releasing 125,000 works in its collection for free use. Others who have understood this change have adopted initiatives such as that of the Museum of Natural Sciences in Manhattan, offering free entrance in return for telling of one’s experience on social networks, something it dubbed a “TweetUp”. A group of young people from Manhattan were given tickets on one condition: that they update their social networking sites during the visit.Going further than this, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry organised a competition promoted on YouTube for people to live 24/7 in the Museum for a month. The winner was Kate McGroaty, chosen out of more than a thousand participants. During her stay she published blogs about her experience that could also be followed on Twitter and Facebook, giving the museum great exposure, so striking was the initiative.Orchestras havealso comeaboard. TheCincinnatiSymphonyOrchestra is onethat hasestablished a“Tweeting section”, a space reserved for members of the audience who wish to send on‐the‐spot comments about the concert through Twitter. In this field, the pioneer was the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, which sent programme notes through its Twitter account during a performance in 2009.This initiative has also been adopted by opera houses. In December 2011, Palm Beach Opera, in an effort to reach out to the young audience, offered twenty free tickets to see Madam Butterfly and tweet their impressions of the performance. The offer also included licence to tweet during the dress rehearsal, when furthermore photos could be taken and uploaded. The majority of those present were under forty.Sharing experiences is one of the key elements of the new digital culture, and so the question is, why not use it to spread culture more broadly?WHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 8: ARE THE SOCIAL NETWORKS ANY USE TO THE CULTURE INDUSTRY? CURRENT PAGE...100