Off Center

Personal media engulfs us, from our cellphones and blogs to iPods and ever-present wifi, but some Carleton College students are diving in even deeper: in the class We Media: The Personal Media Revolution students explore the hows and whys of citizen media. Taught by Carleton’s Cinema and Media Studies Chair John Schott, a panelist at our recent discussion on the ethics of mediated imagery of death and disaster (webcast here), the students create their own blogs, podcasts, and videoblogs (including Digital Lives/Digital Loves, which ruminates on “livin’ digital”). Minneapolis’ own Chuck Olsen vlogs an interview with Schott on MNstories today.

More:

We Media podcast directory

We Media’s useful Online Notebook of Links

Personal media engulfs us, from our cellphones and blogs to iPods and ever-present wifi, but some Carleton College students are diving in even deeper: in the class We Media: The Personal Media Revolution students explore the hows and whys of citizen media. Taught by Carleton’s Cinema and Media Studies Chair John Schott, a panelist at our recent discussion on the ethics of mediated imagery of death and disaster (webcast here), the students create their own blogs, podcasts, and videoblogs (including Digital Lives/Digital Loves, which ruminates on “livin’ digital”). Minneapolis’ own Chuck Olsen vlogs an interview with Schott on MNstories today.

More:

We Media podcast directory

We Media’s useful Online Notebook of Links

When Minnesota Citizens for the Arts unveiled its new economic impact report early this month, the effect the state’s nearly 1600 cultural organizations have on local economies caught our attention: these groups bring in well over three-quarters of a billion dollars each year. Sheila Smith, Executive Director of MCA, has agreed to sign on as guest blogger to share the findings. Smith teaches and lectures nationally about the arts and grassroots advocacy.

I’m driving somewhere north of Bemidji on the “ Great White North Arts & Culture Economic Impact Study Road Show” and it’s snowing. We’re bringing the Word to city councils, county commissioners, local press and legislators across the state – that the arts have a huge economic impact Minnesota and that includes Where You Live.

A new research report, “ The Arts: A Driving Force in Minnesota’s Economy” was released on March 9, 2006 as part of Minnesota Citizens for the Arts’ Arts Advocacy Day. Supporters took the research to legislators to talk about why the arts are important across the state. Here’s the news they delivered: Minnesota’s non-profit arts community has an annual economic impact of over $838.5 million, and over 1500 non-profit arts organizations serve more than 14.5 million people per year – far exceeding the annual attendance of all of our professional sports teams combined.

We know that the most important reasons to support the arts are vibrant communities, smart, well educated kids and the expression of new ideas. But some people don’t understand anything until you explain it to them in numbers. So here we go: over 22,000 Minnesota jobs depend upon the arts. In fact, the arts support more jobs in Minnesota than the mining industry (about 5000). There are even more people whose jobs are supported by the arts than we have dentists (about 14,000).

What makes this groundbreaking research is that in addition to the statewide report we did eleven regional reports. The study partners: MCA, The Forum of Regional Arts Councils and Americans for the Arts, collected nearly 7000 audience intercept surveys statewide. This ridiculously huge over-sample provided some astonishing detail.

The eleven regional studies show that every area of Minnesota, no matter how rural, had at least $1 million in annual economic impact from the arts. Even more interesting, the most rural regions had the highest per capita spending by non-residents, showing a direct link between an area’s arts activities and people coming from out of town to spend money as tourists. That’s a strong incentive for all regions to find more ways to fund and promote the arts as a way to jump-start their economies.

The second, third and fourth largest arts economies in Minnesota are the regions that include Duluth, Rochester and Fergus Falls/Moorhead. With arts economies ranging from $31 to $8 million respectively, the research shows that it’s a myth that the arts are a purely Twin Cities phenomena.

The Big Kahuna is still the Seven County Metro Area, with over half of the state’s population and over $719.5 million in economic impact from its large and diverse nonprofit arts community. This area’s arts economy is two and a half times larger than that of other metro areas studied by Americans for the Arts with similar populations like San Diego, CA and Houston, TX. With the arts being such a driving force in the Seven County Metro Area’s economy, public decision makers need to take notice and be more purposeful about making the arts a part of their economic development strategies.

Clearly, the research shows that communities have a lot to gain when they encourage and support the arts. But they need to understand it. And that’s why we’re out here with our Road Show, looking for a chance to run through the numbers and make some converts. Last week it was St. Paul, Rochester and Mankato. This week it’s Bemidji, Hallock, Staples and Duluth. Watch for us. We’ll be driving soon to a town near you.

Museum blogging is rapidly growing, but you’d hardly know it reading the New York Times‘ article on web use in the special Museums section today: the only blog listed is the Walker’s. No reBlog or Eye Level, Pulitzer Contemporary or the Katzen, or any of the handful of other art museums that are testing bloggy waters. But the article does reiterate what I think is an important point for all museums considering launching blogs–make an effort to resist the impulse to micromanage blog content. Aside from some common-sense blog rules–don’t bash other institutions, minimize expletive use, resist gossiping about co-workers, f.ex.–we at the Walker are given fairly wide berth to use blogs for what they are, an informal, human medium. And, thankfully, it comes straight from the top (Kathy Halbreich tells me this democratic approach is the lasting legacy of former New Media Director Steve Dietz). From the Times:

“We had to learn to relinquish our curatorial authority, to get noninstitutional voices,” said Kathy Halbreich, the director of the Walker. “The blog gives us a multiplicity of voices.”

Robin Dowden, who runs the Walker site, said that in addition to being educational, it helps promote a community. “In the beginning we were a bit afraid,” she said. “But one thing we realized is that our audiences are smart and they want to be engaged.” As a result, the Walker does not edit what bloggers contribute.

For more, check out Eric’s series The State of Museum Blogs or conference notes by Eric, Brent and Nate from Museums & the Web last week.

This month, Eye magazine reviews the Walker’s new identity system. Described as a “pictographic font” or “utility” by Process Type Foundry’s Eric Olson, Walker Expanded “functions as a typeface but instead of bold and italic fonts is grouped into related words, or vocabularies, and repeating patterns; it sets lines of words and textures that, like a roll of tape, can be applied to virtually anything–from printed matter and Web sites to merchandise or even architecture.” Created by Walker designer Chad Kloepfer with Olson and design director Andrew Blauvelt, the versatile stripes are everywhere around here, from our Shop bags and business cards to the Walker magazine and directional signage in the new (expanded, get it?) building. Eye heaps the praise:

The result is beautiful. A Times Square-like streaming river of information full of reverberating graphic patterns; it seems to be continuously flowing and changing. This is a brilliant example of a multi-voiced, reflexive, graphic (not corporate) identity that does what it says.

Also, check out today’s print edition of The New York Times to read a brief piece on the identity applied to shopping bags. Dynamic Graphics has more.

In other designy news: AIA Minnesota has launched a blog on local architecture. Check it out here.

The Regional Archaeological Museum in Agrigento, Italy, is enlisting a robot to lead visitors on tours of the facility. Outfitted with wheels, a keyboard, a monitor, video camera and sensors, Cicerobot will help visitors navigate the museum and provide information on the exhibits:

Harris Dindo, part of the science team at Palermo University that developed the robot, said: “It uses the technique of latent semantic analysis, which means it can answer many of the questions tourists throw at it and have intelligent interaction with them.”

ZDNet has more. Via SmartMobs.

This one’s so fascinating, I’m going to steal it whole. From We-Make-Money-Not-Art:

Fabrice Gygi places riots barricades at museums, creates machines that unfold red carpets, hangs up bombs so that they resemble chandeliers, and makes a provisional voting booth for an undecided nation.

The Swiss artist critiques authoritarian systems by studying everyday architecture and ordinary objects. He questions the police’s preparations ahead of expected riots and our obsession with feeling secure. Confusing resemblances emerge between an object made for torture and a monkey bar, between a refugee camp and a structure for housing a party. The same ambivalence is found in “Aquarium”(2006) and Chèvre (2006), that the artist has created for an exhibition at Magasin 3. Are they intended for torture or for play?

Until May 28, at Magasin 3, Stokholm, Sweden.

Via Fabrica. Check also images of the show Fabrice Gygi: The Aesthetics of Control, at the Orange County Museum of Art in California.

RSS Jockey mixes (by hand) RSS Feeds, with some surprising results. They sent a call out on the Rhizome list yesterday “LOOKING FOR RSS FEEDZ WITH ACIDIC VIDEO LOOPING, MASSIV SOUND SCAPING, FLASH BANGIN SCRIPT, AND TEXT SPLITTING CONTENT.”

So if you’ve got one of those feeds handy send it to RSSJ@RSSJOCKEY.COM

The Rebar Group, creators of such “remixed landscapes” as the guerilla greenspace installed in a parking spot, has a new project in the works. This summer they’ll create Hidden Agenda, “a fully-functional corporate conference room submerged seven feet into the desert floor.” The work references both an Anasazi kiva (an underground chamber for spiritual and political uses) and the secret hideouts used by military, political, and corporate entities to either escape or make decisions on our behalf without our consent.

For more on Rebar, read SFWeekly’s new profile.

Worldmapper features a series of cartograms (or density-equalizing maps), maps devised not to represent land mass but some other variable, like births, deaths, population, number of moped drivers, etc. For example, this map looks at current birth trends:

More children are born each year in Africa than are born in the Americas, all of Europe and Japan put together. Worldwide, more than a third of a million new people will be born on your birthday this year.

[via]