Page 51 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014THEME 5Cultural sector marketing and consumption through digital technologyWhat’s new is no longer digital. What attracts attention isn’t the latest model of smartphone launched a couple of weeks ago and neither is it the millions of people using a social network every day. Neither is it the application that tells you where you’ve parked the car, nor is it the latest thing in delivering your on‐line shopping purchases as fast as possible.The real event is the digitally everyday and the habitually digital. It is no longer newsworthy that you can buy theatre tickets via the Internet, or via your mobile phone while sitting on a bus having just seen a poster that’s made you get your phone out of your pocket. The most normal thing is to ask your friends on Facebook if it’s worthwhile going to see this play while at the same time receiving a reply on Twitter from one of the actors.The important thing these days, tumultuous for some, full of opportunities for others, is to make these opportunities, these advances, help us understand the new scenario which is already here.As Álex de la Iglesia said in his speech at the 2010 Goya Awards ceremony, “The rules of the game have changed (...) the Internet—and all the opportunities—are not the future, they are the present”. It is not now a question of theorising about the “when” because that “when” is now.AC/Eby Esteban Trigos @estebantrigosThe question is to define what the processes are going to be like; the platforms; the experiences; the relationship between a cultural context—of whatever sort—and an increasingly mass environment of “attention seekers”, consumers— readers, concert‐goers, visitors to exhibitions and so forth—who are more and more connected with each other and who are more and better informed with the power of the word that transcends their anonymity and who are capable of trashing a work with their comments and opinions.Technological advances, above all the way they are used, have had a transforming effect in all ways: socially, in business models and, of course, in the field of culture. It should not be forgotten that technology has always been a key element. It has enabled and facilitated the creative processes and the exchange and preservation of our cultural memory. “Without some sort of recording technology, (tablets, paper, wax, electronic and analogue mechanical printing and so on) none of the cultures in which we live would exist.” (Lister et al., 2009).Over and above all of these advances there are two questions that we might regard as the supporting pillars on which the new times we are living through rest. The first is the total accessibility of the digital world, at any time, place and from any kind of device (everywhere, everytime). It is no longerWHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 5: CULTURAL SECTOR MARKETING AND CONSUMPTION THROUGH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY CURRENT PAGE...51