Tag: technology

Surfing on cultural waves

giorgiaboiLeave a comment

ocean-waves

Everyone can publish online. You can post your photos on Facebook and Instagram, you can throw stones on Twitter, write a blog, upload a video on Youtube. However, informative publishing is different. Take some interesting piece of knowledge, analyze it, find the story in it and tell it in an attractive and insightful way is much better in terms of cultural growth, but also much more complicated. And the new media technologies let us do all this in such fabulous ways.

There’s an ocean of possibilities. Cultural institutions like museums, galleries, archives and libraries are an incredible source of knowledge that is there, ready to be turned on, remixed and shared.

Institutions like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam decided to surf the wave and communicate more effectively through new resources and innovative strategic plans. With a new website, specific web-based initiatives and revolutionary ideas like making the entire collection available online, including a nice tool to create and download a personalized wallpaper, the Rijksmuseum substantially increased its attendance and became one of the most visited museums in the world, “a world class institution of Art and History”. As the Chairman of the museum’s Board wrote after the departure of the protagonist of this revolution Wim Pijbes in 2016, “Following the April 2013 reopening the visitor numbers doubled to 2.4 million in 2015. Youth attendance more than doubled, reaching 325,000 in the last year. The special attention given to innovative forms of education has become one of the corner stones of attracting future generations.” This means not only more audience engagement and the speed of culture, but also more tickets and more money for the museum and the economy.

Imagine what would happen if every cultural institution in the world, from the smallest to the largest, would do the same thing, or even better. Providing insights and attractive content like this beautiful digital exhibition from the Städel Museum in Frankfurt on Monet and Impressionism or the one from the MOMA in New York on Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and this engaging web-based project for kids #metkids by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Hopefully we will get there.

Also, I invite you to visit the digital exhibition that I created for the APICE archive of the University of Milan, titled “John Alcorn Graphic and Illustrator“: click here and enjoy.

Jumping monkey

giorgiaboiLeave a comment

monkey1

I realized that by quickly scanning my resume, people may think I’ve been jumping like a monkey from one experience another. It’s part of my nature of insatiable curious, and a closer look will reveal that there’s two fils rouges that link all my experiences. One is reading. Looking for knowledge. Learning. And the second one is digital technologies. Web publishing. Storytelling on the net. This monkey has been pursuing her passions.

After many uncertainties, I realized that my first love and source of inspiration is reading. Books, handbooks, news, blogs, travel journals, websites, drafts. I remember 6 years-old myself falling in love for the first time with a pocket book called “Rosalia” and reading it every day during the break at school. Sitting on a chair, happy and completely absorbed by those wonderful pages. That feeling is what I’ve always been searching.

The biggest satisfaction I’ve had in my brief career was when I helped other people to enhance their writings or talking. At Latitudes, I received articles from journalists and bloggers, I fixed them and then published them on the web magazine. I interviewed people and then transformed their words in interesting articles. More recently, in my project MoltiMedia I’ve been working closely with a writer and helped him to create a modern and attractive book.

I like to be part of the connection between the audience and the organization that may interest him. Even when I was a child, I didn’t want to be like Rosalia, but I was fascinated by the way the author described her. What aspect did he point out? What is the attribute that tells more about her? And how another author would describe this hero?

And all this reading, writing and helping people and organizations to express their creativity in the best way, works perfectly in a digital system. Technology adds pepper and a bunch of amazing possibilities to storytelling. Not only for a novel or an essay, but also for any content that has to be delivered in a direct, effective and attractive way through digital technologies. Culture, literature, art, history, science, news, business, brand identity. You know it. And that’s what I do.

Where will this monkey jump now? Who knows.