Innovation in arts and culture #3: the Happenstance project

Max Eternity @ DAN -   In an ongoing series at the Guardian UK, entitled Innovation in Arts and Culture, Rachel Coldicut writes about "putting digital thinking" front and center in the adminstration of arts organizations.  Coldicut is the acquisitions advisor for Craft Council and her topic of discussion is the Happenstance Project:

Rachel Coldicut @ Guardian UK - The Happenstance project is about putting digital thinking at the heart of arts organisations. If it's successful, we hope it will lead to policy changes that will revolutionise the cultural sector – not just by increasing digital engagement, but also by showing the opportunities that an Agile and iterative approach can offer any creative organisation.

We're doing this by bringing top-level digital expertise into close proximity with arts managers. In fact, our aims are broadly similar to those of the Government Digital Service: it's about making the arts "Digital by Default" rather than digital as an afterthought.  Read more.

Robert Lepage highlights first-ever digital art fest

Montreal Gazette - Robert Lepage launched the first International Biennial of Digital Art (BIAN) this week with Fragmentation, a 3-D projection at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Lepage’s project is one of 30 exhibitions and events during the digital arts biennial, which runs to June 13. BIAN was developed by the Elektra Festival under the artistic direction of Alain Thibault, a composer of electronic music who said in an interview that he has always liked to collaborate with visual arts.  Read more.

2012 HGTC Digital Art's Showcase

The Digital Myrtle Beach (South Carolina) - Students from Horry-Georgetown Technical College's Digital Art program will be showcasing their past two years worth of hard work and achievement at the 2012 Digital Art's Showcase.  Read more.

Global, cutting-edge art festival at Utah Museum of Fine Arts

The Salt Lake Tribune - Low Lives, an annual global, real-time and digital performance-art event, is by nature difficult to define.

A stab at it: Over two days, artists at 25 venues around the earth — including Salt Lake City’s Utah Museum of Fine Arts — will present performance art live that is instantaneously streamed on the Web. Audiences at each venue can watch the on-site performance and witness distant performances on large video screens.  Read more.

Cell phone camera quality reaches fine art photography

SF Examiner - Winning photographs from the inaugural Mobile Photography Awards, an international juried competition, on view at San Francisco’s ArtHaus gallery exemplify today’s digital times.

“I think creativity is unleashed in a different way when you can pull a camera out of your pocket,” says Mobile Photography Awards founder Daniel Berman. “There’s a Wild West feeling to phone photography. Not everyone carries their camera with them, but everyone has their phone.”  Read more.

“Mobile Pixels” opens at LA Center for Digital Art 4/12/12

Blogging Los Angeles - The images from the cell phone have evolved, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art has nearly 3 dozen photographers showing images taken with their cell phones. These promise not to be “instagrams” but rather documentation in an a sometimes digitally manipulated view of the world around us.  Read more.

Digital Art Coming to Times Square

Bloomberg - The bright advertising screens of Times Square are about to get more artsy.

About a dozen large signs will feature digital art displays that are 2-to-3 minutes in duration. It's part of a new Times Square Alliance program.  Read more.