After
Coordinamento: Michele Trimarchi
Analisi e discussione critica sulle tematiche legate all’evoluzione e alle prospettive future dell’industria creativa, nonché alle trasformazioni del suo statuto giuridico, economico e sociale.
Priming as a learning tool in museum environment
Sometimes scholars complain that students and lay public are not able to look at artistic exhibits displayed in a Museum of Fine Arts. We would like to assess whether a model based on priming – acting on implicit memory – may improve the methodology of looking and the learning of artistic topics in the museum environment. Looking is a learned skill that is neither innate nor spontaneous. Onlookers would benefit from a method that may enhance their visual skills.
A contemporary Trajan
Cultural institutions may transmit notions and memories of our past. But today’s audience, more than ever before, is looking for interaction, participation and an appropriation of museum spaces. Monuments can stimulate curiosity, encourage to return another time, surprise with unexpected offers and gives more choices. In this way visiting museums became full of possibilities and visitors can feel the museum as a living space.
Not all that connects is the Internet
The Internet and the empowerment coming from new technologies, such as social media, are more than appealing. It is engaging and almost unavoidable. The Internet is now crucial for the circulation, promotion, and engagement process for many art organisations. Nevertheless, one can argue that the reverse side of this highly participatory society ends up into the paradox when, as a result of the speed of information and input, to which we are daily exposed, we tend to passively react without really engaging with any cause or any interest.
Subverting the monopoly: new music labels in the Middle East
Nowadays the diffusion of music is controlled by a handful of labels that distribute roughly 80% of the music in the world. This monopoly brought about to a standardization of music that not only concerns Western countries but also many developing nations. Nevertheless, some attempts to jeopardize this close market have been undertaken by small independent labels that not only try to create a niche market, but also aim at diffusing lesser known artists and genres in order to diversify the offer and reinvent the production.
Where do we belong? Festivals conquer the urban texture
This reflection comes to my mind when looking at the social and cultural current phenomenon such as the recent proliferation of film festivals around the world. I consider this phenomenon as an expression of the changing nature of the audience that more than ever before is seeking for interaction, participation and, last but not least, physical reappropriation of the local dimension in its urban area.
Un’agenda per la cultura dei prossimi anni
Il sistema culturale attraversa una fase di radicale trasformazione. È l’intera società, il suo paradigma economico e produttivo, le sue relazioni individuali e collettive, a trovarsi su un crinale del quale si percepisce la dimensione ma non si riescono a prevedere gli esiti. La cultura, rappresentazione dinamica e critica della realtà, delle sue interpretazioni e dei suoi aneliti, ne racconta l’evoluzione e ne prospetta il futuro. Per poterlo fare è necessario che il sistema culturale ridisegni sé stesso, alla luce dei cambiamenti in atto, e in vista di un paradigma che sarà dominato da una nuova scala di valori.
Do banks believe in art?
Try to imagine if all banks would believe in local art. Imagine if banks would start investing on a long term and regularly in young artists, selecting them with the help of an organization of the sector dealing with the production activity. Think what would happen if contemporary art would get to everybody’s home, materialized in the images of a calendar given out as a gift for the new year from the bank to its customers.
Culture in U.S.: four more years
President Obama has won the 2012 election and will be remaining in office for another four years. From an arts advocacy standpoint, Obama was clearly the favorable candidate for government arts funding.
Do books matter? The impact of reading upon cultural capital
Why do we like so much to read? The American writer Christopher Morley tells that “when you sell a book to a person, you do not sell just twelve ounces of paper, ink and glue, you sell a whole new life. Love, friendship, and ships in the sea at night, there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book”. Reading is sublime, we all know.
An apparent instability may actually guarantee a future: the World Youth Orchestra case
Given the substancial changes that are happening in the cultural sector in the recent years due to the unstable economic-political environment and the challenges that today’s society arises, the need for cultural organizations to engage in more spontaneous and more innovative ways of managing is essential. The World Youth Orchestra represents an example of an unconventional model of youth orchestra, which seems to be able to survive to the precarious conditions in which it operates.
Can culture be social?
This paper is about an unusual event, organized twice a year in a Northern Italian city, Bologna. The event takes place in a condominium and lasts all night long. It involves all the apartments in the condominium and takes form as a huge, collective, but secret party.
Seeking Wisdom in the Kingdom of Established Labels and Digital Spirits
An interview with Hwiemtun, Fred Roland, a Sweat lodge Keeper, intercultural teacher and global traveler.
Museum Innovation: European state-of-the art, techniques, and approaches
Is interactivity pre-eminently a technological prerogative, or can hands-on, “mechanical,” and “face-to-face” methods be equally successful on the cognitive, sensorial, and emotional levels? More and more, to achieve a relevant use of technology, museums have started to adopt holograms, “talking heads,” sophisticated applications broadcast through high-level screens and touch screens in order to overcome the everyday technology to which audiences are accustomed.
Culture as a cognitive approach
When two individuals are exposed to the same artistic product (a painting, a movie, a poem) they can have quite different reactions to it. Such reactions tend to be of two separate kinds: on one hand, there is the simply hedonistic impact of artistic consumption (“I like it” or “I do not like it”), which implies the revelation of an immediate and emotional process; on the other hand, there is the evaluation about whether such product can be included in the cultural realm.
The revolution of Eco Art
In these weeks, ending on 20th December, Reggio Calabria is hosting “Exhibition of recycled materials and eco-design”, the first Eco Art event ever realised in southern Italy. Promoted by the Department of Environmental Policies of the province of Reggio Calabria, in collaboration with MATREC, and coordinated by architect Antonia Rita Castagnella, the exhibition aims at disseminating the awareness of sustainable art, along with its various potential uses.
What markets for young dancers? The Venice Biennale projects
From an external point-of-view the dance, as a high quality and professional form of performing arts and not as recreational activity, appears not really popular and diffused in our theatres, towns and, more broadly, in our personal experience. The last annual report edited by the Ministry of Culture describes the dance sector as underdeveloped and not so able to exert any appeal to a wide audience.
Social Enterprises in the Cultural Sector. The UK case
The global recession is changing societal structures and priorities at all levels and cultural organisations in the UK – as in many other countries – need to find new alternative ways to ensure their survival and financial sustainability. This article explores the social enterprise model, adopting an entrepreneurial attitude to achieve financial autonomy by delivering social impact, as an opportunity to foster economical resilience in the British cultural sector. It concludes that although the model is promising, the required social consciousness, high capacities and an entrepreneurial culture are not always easily negotiated.
The future of art patronage in an evolving society. From the Roman Empire to the Sheikhdom of Dubai
The patron-client relationship and therefore the “patronage” concept are extremely embedded into our history. As many of us may know according to the The New Oxford American Dictionary, the word “patronage” stands for ‘the support given by a patron’ that is ‘a person who gives financial or other support to a person, organization, cause or activity’. As many of us will then agree, these words provide with a very general and limiting definition of “patronage” that, when applied to the arts sector, has to be more thoroughly investigated, discussing its history and providing tangible examples.
Virtual museums
Starting from a synthetic definition we can consider virtual museums as either the digital multimedia reproduction of an existing museum, based upon virtual reality techniques, or the ex novo creation of a museum structure and experience not existing in reality. Virtuality is much more properly expressed by the latter definition, although the word “virtual” is normally associated with any digital reproduction of reality.
Free Online Music Sharing: irreversible and beneficial
Nowadays, more than ever, music is ubiquitous and it became an integrant part of people’s everyday life and this is mainly the merit of free online music sharing, that can be defined as the distribution of digitally stored music or the provision of access to it, via Internet, either in an authorised or unauthorised by the copyright holder manner. Thus, the present state of affairs can not be without significant benefits for all entities in the music industry, old and new, if they accept change and do not fail to adapt and innovate.
The new frontiers of 3D art
Digital art is quite complex: it is not just photo editing or video recording. It can push creativity to its “ordinary” extremes just as in the experience of a sculptor with a block of chalk; it is the art of our time, incorporating the most advanced technology and exerting a deep and realistic impact; it has produced a substantial revolution in subjects and canons of painting, enhancing the intensive connections between the arts and communication.
Fund-raising for capital: the road to immortality
Capital campaigns, which are usually a programmatic method to raise funds for physical improvements, are often seen as the transitionary period in which an organization becomes an institution. Of course, a minor campaign for computer or furniture upgrades will not have such a lasting impression, but still begs the question: Why should an arts organization expend human and financial resources in order to acquire capital?
Crafts, a hidden heart of creative industries
Among the various cultural industries, crafts deserve particular interest as in many developing countries they represent a business activity which has often been more accessible than others, as it is less demanding in terms of technological innovations, and therefore of financial capital, and closer to local resources and traditional knowledge.
Urban Art: new markets for cultureUrban Art: new markets for culture
The new contemporary art scenario is evolving very fast and is bringing some deep changes into the entire system. The last twenty years have seen the evolution and rise of some new genres as Street art (born directly form the late 70’s NY graffiti movement), POP Surrelism and what is generally defined as Urban Art.
Making places: the plan as a process in the Green University project
A few months ago the new Campus of LUISS University in Roma was the object of an artistic action aimed at emphasizing the wasteful behaviour of its users (students as well as teachers) during their everyday activities.
Creativity: a proposed taxonomy
Creativity is at stake in the whole world. Many recent analyses have been carried out in various Countries, being aimed at defining, measuring and evaluating creativity and its impact upon the economy and welfare; they adopt quite different views, draw quite heterogeneous conclusions, and tend to ignore the crucial role played by central and local governments in promoting, strenghtening and diffusing creativity.
