#3

WELCOME #3 The third edition of SyncTank, the print companion to welcometosync.com, is all about the three Ps

— Practice, People and Process.

At Sync, we’ve been listening to the ideas and concerns of those working in the arts in Scotland, and learning about how best to turn this knowledge into real and exciting digital innovation in the sector.

What you’ll read in these pages are think pieces, profiles and features that explore, highlight and promote the ideas and processes that we think will ultimately inform and influence another very important ‘P’ — Policy.

welcometosync.com

@synchq

Sync is a programme of activities, including Culture Hack Scotland and Geeks- in-Residence, designed to support cultural organisations in Scotland develop a more progressive relationship with technology and technologists. The pieces in this publication are part of a bigger set of articles and information you can find on the Sync website. If you enjoy what you read here, pay us a visit — we’d love you to join in the conversation.

SYNc TEAM, NovEMbEr 2013

SYNC TEAM

ROHAN GUNATILLAKEERIN MAGUIREDEVON WALSHE SUZY GLASSEMMIE McKAYCHRIS SHARRATTCONTRIBUTORS

DAVID KETTLEBEN EASTLUCY CONWAY

PEOPLE

If you would like to contribute

to SyncTank please email:

hello@welcometosync.com

Sign up to our mailing list:

welcometosync.com

Designed by Rydo

Edited by Chris Sharratt

SyncTank is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland

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COMMENT:

–PRACTICE-LED // ROHAN GUNATILLAKE

FEATURES

–SOPHIA GEORGE: V&A GAMES DESIGNER IN RESIDENCE–VICKI BENNETT’S ADVENTURES IN SOUND & VISION–JOE HOWE ON CONDUCTING ‘LIVE’ DIGITAL MUSIC

COMMENT:

–PEOPLE-CENTRED // SUZY GLASS

PROFILE:

–HUGH WALLACE: HEAD OF DIGITAL, NATIONAL MUSEUMS SCOTLAND

INTRODUCING:

–THE SYNCLIST: OUR NEW SHOWCASE OF TALENT

SYNC SESSIONS:

–TALKING ANONYMOUSLY ABOUT ARTS ORGANISATIONS & DIGITAL

COMMENT:

–PROCESS-FOCUSED // ROHAN GUNATILLAKE

CULTURE HACK SCOTLAND:

–THIS YEAR’S 48-HOUR HACK REVIEWED

GEEKS-IN-RESIDENCE

–EDINBURGH MEET-UP REPORT & EIGG BOX THINKING

LAST WORD:

–ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS

CONTENTS

PRACTICE -LED

Real digital innovation in the arts has to be about the art, and that means focusing on creative practice rather than digital platforms and business models.

ROHAN GUNATILLAKE

COMMENT

7

I used to think that policy was not real life

— that it was the stuff of jargon-filled documents

thrust down from ivory towers. But then I noticed

an interesting change, and one that was especially

clear in the area of digital innovation in the arts.

I noticed that it was no longer the wonks who held

the lead in the policy conversation; it was the

practitioners.

With a lack of practical digital intelligence

at the higher echelons of organisations with more

traditional influence, I’ve found that the best source

for policy-like insights and models for progressive

digital practice are the people and organisations who

are actually producing work — the likes of iShed,

Caper, National Theatre Wales, Hide&Seek, Blast

Theory, and Sync. It is clearly a time for producer-led

policy making.

At Sync, we’ve started to reflect on all that we’ve

done to date, what we’ve seen and what it might

mean. Through our experiments, we’ve seen, listened

and learned enough to propose a fresh new policy

direction in response to the question: what should be

done to enable the most progressive relationship

possible between the arts and digital? The framework

we propose is made up of three conveniently

alliterative parts: practice-led, process-focused and

people-centred.

The last five years has seen the arts bullied by

new technology and it is something that needs to

stop. So much activity has been driven by two main

stories: that we must adapt to a particular digital

platform or tool because it’s the fashionable thing

to do; and that the integration of new technologies

will create new business models and income streams

that will improve our balance sheets — if only we

were to become more entrepreneurial. 3↑ I'd Hide You by Blast Theory

8

Practice-led innovation — say it out loud and

smile. Let’s invest in and prioritise the making of new

creative work that is inspired by and built on digital

tools and digital thinking. Only when this innovation

stuff makes a difference to creative programmes will

it get the attention it deserves. To continue to silo it

within communications and marketing relegates its

importance, and to continue to call it digital art rather

than just art belies the fact that as a society we’re

moving on from classifying digital as different from

everything else in our lives.

It may sound like stating the obvious to say that

digital innovation in the arts must be about the art,

but from a policy perspective this has just not been

the case. The starting place for this approach is

the artists and companies already practising in this

way: Circumstance, James Bridle, the Lighthouse

in Brighton, as well as processes like Culture Hack

Scotland and the brilliant suite of work that makes

up the REACT collaboration, hosted by Watershed

in Bristol. These show what can happen when digital

is seen as part of the creative toolset.

Of course, practice-led innovation is not

appropriate for everyone, and those who do not

want to use digital tools and digital thinking to create

new work must be able to make that choice. But if

we continue to ignore practice as a priority area for

innovation policy and support, the relevance of the

arts in society will inevitably be eroded. :

> Both stories ignore the fact this doesn’t have

to be a one-way street. It’s about time we gave the

arts the chance to influence digital technology as

much as the other way round; it’s time to grow

together as partners rather than battle it out like

a couple in a dysfunctional relationship.

It’s often said that what art does best is help

us find meaning in what it is to be human, and in the

last decade understanding technology and how it is

impacting on our world has became paramount. As

a society we need more art that takes digital tools

and digital thinking and uses it to express and curate

beauty, meaning and debate.

Much attention from funders and other

infrastructure bodies is given to digital as a way to

help organisations do what they’re already doing,

but a little bit better: smarter ways of marketing and

selling tickets; using broadcast to take existing work

to more people; updating your web presence so it

works on mobile.

While this kind of thing is certainly important,

it is a disservice to the sector to call it digital

innovation, rather than what it really is —

organisational development. To describe such

work as innovation lowers the bar of our collective

ambition.

Funders also have an obsession with business

model innovation — again, part of the story that if

we’d only try hard enough, we’d discover a scaleable

market-ready income stream that takes the pressure

off grant finance. This focus on business model

innovation is often poorly defined and by definition

takes already stretched organisations away from their

core business. After all, most arts organisations are

so brilliantly streamlined and good at what they do

that they’re not in a position to do things differently.

This article was originally published by Guardian Culture Professionals Network.

Rohan Gunatillake is a co-producer of Sync.

“Let’s invest in and prioritise the making of new creative work that is inspired by and built on digital tools and digital thinking.”

9FEATURES

“THERE’S NOTHING STOPPING A GAME WINNING THE TURNER PRIZE. EVENTUALLY”

BEN EAST

Sophia George is the V&A’s first Game Designer in Residence. We talk to her and the project’s partners about the challenges and possibilities the residency presents.

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> It could almost be a scene from Tomb Raider.

Wide-eyed and curious, a young woman peers around

the 15th century chapel of Santa Chiara, looking for

inspiration and adventure as she takes in her

surroundings. In fact, though, it isn’t a chapel at all

— it’s the V&A’s stunning medieval and renaissance

rooms in London, and the woman is Sophia George,

a 22-year-old BAFTA winner and the museum’s first

Game Designer In Residence. “It’s exciting,” she says,

”but also just a little bit daunting.”

It's hardly surprising that George finds it all a

bit scary. There are a staggering 4·5million objects

in the V&A's collection, and the project — which

began in earnest in October — will involve using

a small number of these as inspiration for a game

or app. Sensibly, as daunting as it may be, the

Dundee-based games designer has plan.

“In the application process, I had to supply

artwork, videos and suggestions for the residency,”

she explains. ”The idea is to make a game based

solely on the British collection, so I’ll be spending

a lot of time in those galleries, but I’ll also host public

participation programmes, with games jams and

workshops for children and families.”

George continues:“It’s all about showing how

games, digital, art and culture can merge into one.

In schools we’re taught that IT is separate to the

arts, but if you look at games design properly,

there’s concept art, sculpture, sound — all sorts.”

George, who was one of the judges of this year’s

Culture Hack Scotland, studied Games Art & Design

at Norwich University of the Arts. In 2011 she

submitted a game to Abertay University’s Dare To Be

Digital competition. After winning with Tick Tock Toys,

a puzzle game for iPad, she went on to gain a BAFTA

Ones To Watch award in 2012. Then, on completing

her MProf in Games Development at Abertay, the

university gave George and the team who worked

on Tick Tock a £25,000 grant from its Prototype

Fund. Earlier this year, the finished game was

downloaded a staggering 100,000 times in its

first week.

The residency is a partnership between the V&A,

V&A at Dundee, the University of Abertay Dundee

and the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment

(Ukie), the games industry body. Professor Louis

Natanson, who leads computer games education

at Abertay, chuckles with satisfaction at his former

student’s meteoric rise: “Sophia is clearly a very

special, formidable person,” he says.

Natanson is keen to see how the residency

impacts on the idea and reputation of games design,

but there’s an end product here, too. After George

has completed her six months in London, she will

go back to Abertay to produce the game with a crew

of programmers and artists. Although how much of

a traditional ’game’ George’s idea ends up being is

still to be determined.

“It may be an app that has a playful element to

it,” suggests Natanson. “What we and the V&A are

looking at is how you engage people using some

of the techniques of gaming, without necessarily

providing a traditional game with levels and so on.”

3

→ Victoria & Albert Museum, main entrance. Credit : Victoria and Albert Museum, London

↗ (Next spread): Tick Tock Toys for iPad, designed by Sophia George

↘ (Next spread) Noble Living gallery at Victoria and Albert Museum. Credit : alanwilliamsphotography.com

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> “When you’re going around a museum, often

you find information about an exhibit on a board

beside it. But that’s very restrictive. Games and

digital content allow people to discover stuff for

themselves and the experience is naturally richer

for that. The audience feels they have created

their own visit.”

V&A residency co-ordinator Ruth Lloyd agrees

that digital tools are now a natural way to create

links between the objects and stories in the collection

and museum-goers. But interestingly, she’s just as

keen for the residency to underscore the idea of

games design as a serious subject worth

investigating. Everything in the V&A was new and

innovative once — and for Lloyd, this residency

simply continues an ethos of engaging in current

art and design.

“The V&A is the national museum of applied arts

and design,” she says. ”We not only collect design

but represent it, and so it was natural for us to

reflect what’s happening now. And it’s not just about

archiving good games design, it’s celebrating the

process of creating it — and a residency brings

together the people who make the work, the people

who talk about it, the people who advocate it and

those who teach it.”

So in the future, the V&A might celebrate more

cerebral PlayStation 3 games such as Flower or

Journey as examples of artistic excellence. (Designer

Jenova Chen has said his intention with both games

was to get away from the typical defeat / kill / win

mentality.)

“Both of those games are wonderful,” smiles

George. “They could easily go in an art gallery and

museum, and I’d like to see more of that. People are

getting very excited about the capabilities of the

new PlayStation and Xbox, but I’d prefer to see more

experimentation in game design, and different artistic

styles being involved.

“You know, I got a congratulatory e-mail from

someone about the V&A residency, and the next line

was ’now you have to try and make games win the

Turner Prize’. And there’s nothing stopping that

happening. Eventually.”

Indeed, Wafaa Bilal’s Virtual Jihadi, a shoot-

’em-up in which the artist cast himself as a suicide

bomber, was the stand-out exhibit in a group show

at Manchester’s Cornerhouse gallery last year. At

the time, Bilal said that it wasn’t a game produced

for commercial gain, but to make a point about

“the vulnerability of Iraqi citizens to the travesties

of the current war and racist generalisations.”

“People do tend to get a bit shocked when they

hear about games that are created without a financial

imperative,” says George.

Natanson believes there has been a huge shift

in the image of game design: “We used to have to

persuade parents that coming to Abertay wasn’t

going to be a waste of their child’s hard-earned

qualifications,” he says. “And really, for the last

decade, we haven’t had to make that argument.

Game design is a serious part of the economy, and

our programming degrees are strong maths-based

computer science courses where the best minds

of a generation are tackling some pretty big

problems.”

And now, showing their skills to the wider public

in one of the most prestigious museums in the world.

”Absolutely,” agrees Natanson. “I firmly believe that

if Leonardo Da Vinci was studying now, it would

probably be something connected with games.

They have that same lovely mix which transcends

art, culture and technology to find something new.”

:

“In schools we’re taught that IT is separate to the arts, but if you look at games design properly, there’s concept art, sculpture, sound — all sorts.”

Ben East is a freelance arts writer and journalist based in Manchester. @beneast74

ADVENTURES IN SOUND & VISION

CHRIS SHARRATT

As People Like Us, artist Vicki Bennett has been working in the field of audio-visual collage for over 20 years. Here she talks about digital’s impact on her practice and process.

FEATURES

15

Digital technologies have changed the way

Vicki Bennett creates her art — but she

emphatically states that this doesn’t make her

a ’digital artist’. ”I am not playing with digital

technology,” she says. ”I am just using the platform

to make something. The results show little sign

of what was used to create them.”

The impact of digital technology has, she explains,

been immense and groundbreaking. ”Since 2000 my

work has flowered. People may be nostalgic about the

[pre-digital] limitations, but it was very frustrating.

Now I am doing what I had in mind for a full 15 years

of analogue technology. People always argue that

limitation is good. Well it is, if those limitations are

something you set for yourself, not ones imposed

upon you because of your circumstances.”

Bennett, better known to some as People Like

Us, recently released a new 15-minute work, Gesture

Piece. It features scenes from hundreds of films, all

representing gestures or instructions, which Bennett

has deftly edited into seven ’chapters’. She then

invited a different sound artist to create a new

score for each section.

“My work is very much process led, and it’s only

a matter of tradition/necessity in art that there is a

product at all,” she says. ”So the journey, the search,

is the place where ideas form and — if I’m lucky —

exciting surprises happen.”

Gesture Piece was commissioned by Pixel Palace,

the digital media arts programme of Tyneside Cinema.

Mark Dobson, Tyneside’s Director, feels that Bennett’s

approach dovetails perfectly with the purpose and

intent of the programme.

“People often obsess about the technology and

it becomes a barrier to what they want to achieve,

rather than a means to achieve it,” says Dobson.

”What’s been interesting about the [Pixel Palace]

artists so far — like Vicki Bennett but also someone

like Kelly Richardson who we worked with last year

— is that they have an absolute clear vision of what

it is they want to create, and the technology allows

them to create that. They are not learning

technologies in order to have an idea — I think that’s

critically important for the kind of work we’ve been

wanting to look at.”

For Bennett, making Gesture Piece involved

watching around 150 films, identifying clips to use

and then subediting these for inclusion. After that,

things got a bit messy.

“I take written notes of what they [the film clips]

are,” explains Bennett. ”Then I print out the written

notes and cut them out and put them all over the

floor. This is where I start to make the conceptual

connections between the material, like the

ingredients to a recipe.”

Although not on the same scale, the visual

experience of watching Gesture Piece is similar to

that of Christian Marclay’s crowdpleasing 24-hour

epic, The Clock (2010). Bennett knows Marclay and

admires his work — in fact she even helped out

a little with the making of The Clock.

“I did actually contribute some clips. I was

working on a large piece of work myself at the time

and spending several months watching movies on

fast forward, so I told Christian I’d look out for clocks

along the way. I still get excited when I see clocks

in films.” 3

→ (Next page) Extracts from Gesture Piece by Vicki Bennett

← Vicki Bennett

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> Bennett’s work, again like Marclay’s, is

very much concerned with sound, how it affects

us, and how we interpret the world through it.

“My background is in making audio compositions

(albums, radio and so on), for over two decades

now. And I actually think it’s all the same — it is

all compositional and I approach visual art and art

that uses sound in the same way.”

Working with other artists forms a large part

of Bennett’s practice — last year she curated Radio

Boredcast for AV Festival, a month-long radio station

that produced 744 hours of sound and involved

around 100 artists. ”[Doing Radio Boredcast]

started me wondering how I could make a film

which collaborated with other artists, something

I’ve not done before,” she says.

“Then I started to think about the tag-teaming

methods that I use to edit material, where I place

similar imagery side-by-side and gradually change

the content. I thought that it would be nice to make

a film where I gave a different piece to each artist,

isolated from that which was to go before and after

it, and to see what happened.”

The seven sound artists Bennett worked with

include Baltimore-based Matmos (experimental

electronic music duo M C Schmidt and Drew Daniel),

UK composer and collagist Ergo Phizmiz and New

York-based composer and performer (and Professor

of Psychiatry, Neurology and Pharmacology at

Columbia University’s Department of Neuroscience),

Dave Soldier.

While Bennett had no way of knowing how

the pieces would turn out, she’s clearly pleased with

the result. ”It [the sound] does work without the

movie, and the movie works without the soundtracks.

The context changes of course, and maybe the

setting you would put it in to view it, but essentially

they work independently from each other.”

Interestingly — bearing in mind the nature of the

organisation that commissioned it — Gesture Piece is

screening exclusively online. The idea was Tyneside’s

rather than the artist’s. (“I’m happy for this film and

all published work to be screened anywhere capable

of doing so,” says Bennett.)

Tyneside’s director sees the decision to distribute

it this way as part of the cinema’s ongoing interest in

disrupting traditional cinematic forms of distribution.

”We did think about the idea of premiering it to

Tyneside audiences online at a set time, asking them

to bring along popcorn, that kind of thing, but in

the end we thought that wasn’t appropriate. We’re

playing around with ideas of distribution and looking

at the role of the building and the context in which

something is viewed.”

Bennett, meanwhile, is perfectly happy for the

piece to just be viewed online. In fact, on the Vimeo

page of Gesture Piece, she has inserted markers so

that people can experience the start points of all

seven soundtracks.

“I have no problem with people pausing or moving

around a piece. There is value to having the attention

span to experience things in full like they were

originally made (and sometimes intended),” she says.

”But it’s up to us what the hell we decide to do with

it after that point.” 1

peoplelikeus.org

Chris Sharratt is a writer and editor based in Glasgow. He is the editor of SyncTank.

@chrissharratt

“I am not playing with digital technology, I am just using the platform to make something. The results show little sign of what was used to create them.”

CONDUCTING CHANGE: DIRECTING ’LIVE’ DIGITAL MUSIC

Musician and composer Joe Howe has developed a dynamic tool for conducting electronic and acoustic music. He explains why it’s needed and how it works.

DAVID KETTLE

FEATURES

19

“This whole project came from a problem —

how to involve the choir and soloists with music that

was pre-recorded on a computer. More importantly,

how to make it so that the conductor could direct

everything with some kind of dynamism.”

Joe Howe has just finished his Masters in the

Sound for the Moving Image course at Glasgow

School of Art, and solving this conducting conundrum

forms part of his thesis submission. ”The idea behind

my system,” he says, ”is that a conductor could

conduct both the electronics and human performers

with the same movements.”

It’s an ambitious idea, but judging by the

presentation he gave at Glasgow School of Art’s

graduate degree show in the city’s Lighthouse design

centre, it works. The project’s origins, however,

predate Howe’s time at GSA.

“I’d been living in Germany for a couple of years

and I was approached to work on an opera by the

Argentinian composer Santiago Blaum, called Switch

On: Konferenzoper,” he explains. Appropriately

enough, the opera, staged at Berlin’s HAU3 arts

centre in October 2010, was itself about electronic

music.

Along with its four-strong chorus, its three main

characters represented three early pioneers in the

field: Wendy Carlos, Robert Moog and Rachel Elkind.

And it was all delivered in the form of a Baroque-

style opera. ”I was brought in to translate lots of

Baroque music into electronic music, arranging it

for four synthesisers,” says Howe.

Ironically, the solution they ended up with for

that particular project was rather prosaic: “We just

used the laptop’s spacebar to control the tempo

in the end,” he explains, ”but we wanted to finesse

the system, and make it into something that people

could actually use.” 3

↑Joe Howe demonstrates his conducting program at The Lighthouse, Glasgow.

> What Howe has developed is based around the

synthesised Baroque music he arranged for Switch

On, but he can now control the overall speed and the

individual dynamics of each of the four synthesisers,

using gestures rather than a keyboard.

“Your left hand controls the speed, and you use

your right hand for dynamics,” he explains. ”It’s just

like a conductor would do with an orchestra. When

you start using the program, you get the orchestra

ready by holding up your left hand as if to ask

everyone to watch you — again, like a conductor

might do.” After that, it’s a case of giving the

overall pulse with the left hand, and summoning

and balancing different lines with gestures from

the right.

But how does it actually work? “The system

consists of a laptop running Max MSP and Synapse,

four speakers, and a Kinect camera that works with

the Xbox 360, which is an infrared sensor as well as

a camera. It perceives depth as well as motion.” This

means that the user can move their arms forward

and back as well as up, down and from side to side.

“The Synapse program imposes a skeleton on the

user’s body, so when you first start using it, you have

to strike a pose to show it where the joints of your

body are. After that, it’s always looking for the left

and right hand in space, relative to a line down the

centre of the torso.”

→ Joe Howe in mid-flow at The Lighthouse, Glasgow

↘ Synapse software screen shot

↓ Screen shot of Joe Howe's conducting program

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It’s an impressive sight in action, with Howe

nudging the speed of a synthesised Jean-Baptiste

Lully orchestral piece up or down a notch by varying

his left-hand gestures, and pointing at the system’s

speakers to indicate which lines he wants louder.

For Howe, it’s important that the system matches

as closely as possible what human musicians would

be used to. ”The world of opera, for example, is very

rarefied, and everyone is very highly trained, so you

don’t want something that’s completely alien coming

in and disrupting things.

“I want this system to be invisible, essentially,

so that the conductor can do his or her job without

having an extra element that might make things more

complicated.” Likewise, he’s thinking of adapting the

system so that it could eventually learn individual

conductors’ movement styles.

Originally from Perthshire and now based in

Glasgow, Howe studied for a degree in English Lit.

Music, though, has always been important to him and

he has worked on a variety of other music projects in

recent years. ”I’ve had piano lessons since I was five,

so it was probably inevitable that I’d end up in music.”

He’s also already been in the music business for

ten years. ”I’ve released eight albums in that time,”

he says. ”Before this, I was mainly recording albums,

and touring in Europe and the US. I used to play in

a very silly band called Gay Against You, which was

more like performance art — stupid costumes,

running about in the audience, making a big mess.

The most recent thing I’ve been involved in is called

Ben Butler and Mousepad, which is getting more

towards dance music with synthesisers.” 3

22

> Howe is currently working on a monster-

themed project with visual artist Annabel Frearson.

“Her PhD project is to make a new novel using all the

words of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and she’s got

lots of arts projects that are iterations of this. She

asked me to make an album of eight songs using

the text, which we called Bad Brain Call.” The pair

presented a live version of the album in October

at Art Licks in London.

How does he view his electronic conducting

project in the context of his earlier work? “It’s

absolutely not stuff I was used to working with

before,” he admits, explaining that the GSA course

opened his eyes to the possibilities of using

technology in this new way.

“I got a lot of confidence out of it — confidence

to make ideas such as this happen, and also technical

confidence. The difference is that this is facilitating

an idea, whereas my previous work was making a fun

piece of music. I can now approach a project in a

technical manner, rather than simply making a piece

of music that suits it — that’s the distinction.”

For the future, Howe has a simple ambition: to

see his new electronic conducting system in action.

”I hope we’re going to use it on a new opera I’m

working on, also with Santiago Blaum, in the

Sofiensaal in Berlin in the New Year. It’s going to be

a version of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. Ironically,

we may not actually need to use it, as there’s only

one singer. But the director is very interested,

so there’s definitely a possibility.”

“The idea behind my system is that a conductor could conduct both the electronics and human performers with the same movements.”

Even if that doesn’t come off, he’s keen to find

uses for the system elsewhere. “I’m approaching

a lot of other people about it. I definitely want it to

have a practical application — whether it’s me using

it, or asking others to think about incorporating it

into their work. But hopefully with me being involved!”

:

joe-howe.com

David Kettle is a writer, editor and classical music specialist . His work has appeared in numerous publications including The Times, BBC Music Magazine, The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, The Strad, Classical Music and The List .

PEOPLE -CENTRED

Digital policy needs to be all about people, rather than the technology, if we’re ever to successfully embed digital creativity in the arts.

SUZY GLASS

COMMENT

24

> There’s a trap we keep falling into as we

attempt to embed digital creativity in the arts.

Just look at the programmes that encourage and

support digital work. They tend to focus on product:

what innovative thing are you making? Occasionally,

they deal with organisational health: how can you

be better equipped to deliver this type of work?

Talent development, though, barely gets a look in

— it seems we’re forgetting that behind every great

digital project there’s at least one great person

making it happen.

Little wonder, then, that there are very few

people working in the arts in the UK who are ready

to drive the digital agenda, who feel confident

enough to bring together teams to make genuinely

mind-blowing digital work. Instead, they are at best

struggling to come up with digital ideas, and at worst

so confused or overwhelmed by the task that they’re

hiding their heads in the sand.

Even the language we use is wobbly and

unconvincing. Take digital, technology and

innovation — words that are regularly interchanged

with one another. Not only is this irritating for any

semantic sticklers out there, it’s also contributing

to misconceptions that are holding the sector back,

preventing us from moving enthusiastically towards

a future in which digital creativity is no longer

fetishised or feared.

These terms all carry big meanings. For a lot of

people, they carry intimidating baggage, too. Just one

of them on its own might be enough to send a digital

scaredy-cat into a frenzy of panic. Bundled together,

they can represent a world of torment and confusion.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Digital creative

work, like most if not all creative work, is led by

(and made for and about) people. And at Sync, we’ve

started making sure that people are at the heart of

all our conversations. We’ve shifted our focus and

tone, and we think that those designing and

managing funding programmes and training

opportunities should do the same. We want people

to drive the agenda, not the technologies, projects

or products.

Towards the end of 2012, we realised that a

significant number of people we were talking to about

digital innovation were crippled by what can only be

described as fear. We found that people are worried

about looking idiotic, feeling irrelevant, being pushed

to one side, being overwhelmed by things they don’t

really understand. They are worried about economic

and reputational pain.

It’s really no wonder, then, that nationwide we’re

struggling to develop an environment that nurtures

excellent digital work in a way that’s progressive and

sustainable. And yet how we make a work that sits

on a digital platform or uses digital tools is really no

different to making a non-digital piece — we bring

visionary people together to imagine and then build

the impossible, to find meaningful ways of talking

about contemporary issues, to engage people in

dialogue and discussion.

There’s no secret recipe with digital; we just need

the right people to be together in the right room at

the right time. Yes, of course at some point we’ll start

talking about logistics and technologies, and that’s

when the experts within the team should be able

to take over. Whether they’re specialists in app

development or lighting design, data management

or script editing, the principle is the same.

“At Sync, we’ve started making sure that people are at the heart of all our conversations, not the technologies, projects or products.”

25

Clearly though, something isn’t quite clicking,

which brings us to the role of the producer within the

digital landscape. These are people who can straddle

different sectors, speak different languages, bring

disparate people together and facilitate processes

that support effective communication. It’s not just

about producers though; as this conversation has

developed, we’ve started to talk about ’bilingual’

people. These might be designers or developers,

directors or writers — whatever they call themselves,

they are the lynchpins.

You may know some. There’s Sarah Ellis, currently

doing amazing work at the Royal Shakespeare

Company; or Ben Templeton, who has developed

work with Tate and the National Museum of Scotland

through his company Thought Den. Look also at how

Yann Seznec works, making and selling innovative

products through his company Lucky Frame and also

sustaining an individual arts practice, collaborating

with the likes of musician Matthew Herbert and

the Edinburgh Art Festival.

Bilingual people know others who work in

different sectors. They can predict and deal with

points of divergence, and they know how to steer

towards points of overlap. They are the people who

can create the right environment for progressive

creative processes to emerge and establish

themselves.

This article was originally published by Guardian Culture Professionals Network.

Suzy Glass is a co-producer of Sync.

@suzyGlass

The single most impactful thing we can do to

create a sustainable digital landscape within arts

practice is to concentrate on these people; those

who already exist and those who are showing signs

of becoming bilingual. There are relatively few of

them, but it’s worth seeking them out, concentrating

on them, and ultimately creating better spaces to

work in. Let’s support the real innovators to do what

they do best. Let’s believe in them and give them

room to experiment. :

← (Previous page) Yann Seznec at Culture Hack Scotland 2013. Photo by Chris Scott

↑ Culture Hack Scotland 2013. Photo by Chris Scott

CREATING DIGITAL SPACE AT THE MUSEUM

PROFILE

Hugh Wallace, Head of Digital Media at National Museums Scotland, shares his thoughts on embedding digital in the museums sector.

CHRIS SHARRATT

27

“The thing with digital,” says Hugh Wallace,

“is that if you over-evangelize it and overstate what

it’s going to do, it can come back to bite you. So,

my style is very much that of the diplomat, the

pragmatist.”

Wallace is Head of Digital Media at National

Museums Scotland — a grand title that needs to be

put into perspective. The digital team, which he was

responsible for recruiting after joining the museum

from Oxfam four years ago, has three other staff.

It is the smallest department in one of Scotland’s

pre-eminent cultural institutions, which has nearly

300 full-time staff across its four venues, and in 2012

attracted nearly two million visitors at the National

Museum of Scotland alone. “Big remit, small team,”

smiles Wallace.

Before Wallace took on the role, there was no

digital department. But while that means he was

starting from a pretty low base, he says that the

organisation was well prepared for his arrival. 3

↑ Hugh Wallace

← Grand Gallery, National Museum of Scotland

28

> “The person who’d brought me into the

organisation had made the case and already folded

some other roles into the team, so there was no

sense of any resentment about this new shiny

digital thing. The big focus at the time was a public

engagement strategy that joined the dots between

programming and learning, and seeing digital as

all part of that.”

Four years on, and with the museum having

recently added a very digital artifact — FOUND’s

Cybraphon — to its collection, Wallace feels that

the organisation is at a pivotal moment in terms

of its digital ambitions.

“We’ve got to a point where it’s seen as an

important, value-adding part of the rich array of

things that National Museums Scotland does," he

says. “But at the same time, it’s often been a happy

accident that we’ve been able to do stuff, rather

than part of a strategic approach. Developing the

appropriate mechanisms for people so that they

can get the digital team in the right place to shape

a project — that’s a big piece of work that is

needed now.”

A clear strategy and voice, believes Wallace, is

crucial to the process of embedding digital into an

organisation’s culture. "There are people who say

that organisations don’t need a digital strategy and

there shouldn’t be separate digital media

departments — that it should be so intrinsic to

what we’re doing that there shouldn’t be something

called digital.

“But in all my experience, it’s really important

that there’s someone who can translate and interpret

what can be quite complex and abstract ideas to

those who don’t necessarily have an appreciation

of technology or an understanding of data. There’s

a definite role for that in lots of organisations —

the person who can broker conversations at

multiple levels.”

Wallace’s ’happy accidents’ at National Museums

Scotland have delivered some interesting results

to date, from a significant jump in website traffic

to a simple but successful Museum Explorer app,

released last October. More recently, the launch in

May of Capture The Museum — a mobile, multiplayer

game produced in collaboration with Thought Den

and Splash and Ripple — has provided an extra layer

of competitive engagement when exploring the

collection.

↑ Imagine Gallery, National Museum of Scotland

↗ Grand Gallery, National Museum of Scotland

29

A prototype funded by the Technology Strategy

Board — “I happened to be at the right end of a

phone when someone got in touch,” says Wallace,

“I think we were lucky.” — the end result is great

fun and something quite different for the museum.

Although there’s still some tech work needed and the

mechanics of facilitating the game in a busy museum

remain a challenge, Wallace is

hugely positive about the

project. But while a lot of

attention has been paid to the

app itself, for Wallace it’s been

about a lot more than just the

end result.

“One of the biggest innovations was the actual

process and being able to realise the project at all,”

he says. “The digital team tend to sit in an office and

our work is largely delivered to devices or computers,

so to suddenly become part of the physical

institution — and very obviously because you’re

all over it — wasn’t without its challenges.

“The game is very much about a physical presence

in a museum setting, and I know now what a big deal

that is for an institution of our size, and how it just

wouldn’t have been tolerated and allowed in a lot

of places.”

Bringing in outside thinking

and letting that shape the

finished product was also a

challenging, but ultimately

fruitful, process. “It was very

much a collaborative effort,

with us always trying to meet

them halfway — sometimes failing and sometimes

over delivering.”

Although it was only funded as a prototype with

no requirement for it to be sustainable, if funding

can be secured, Wallace is keen to refine and further

develop Capture The Museum. “We feel we have

something that is worth doing, and having put so

much effort in to get here it would be great to see

it continue.” 3

“We’ve got to a point where digital is seen as an important, value-adding part of the rich array of things that National Museums Scotland does.”

30

Part of what will be explored in the newly

refurbished galleries is the intersection between

the disciplines — how things get made and produced.

It’s clearly fertile territory and Wallace is already

beginning to explore ideas.

“It’s a really ripe area to be doing some cool stuff

in,” he says. “What I’d like us to achieve is possibly

something mobile-delivered, but it’s difficult to tell.

We haven’t quite worked out what the hell it will

be yet!” :

> What’s next for Wallace and his team? The

biggest story in the National Museum of Scotland’s

recent history has been the reopening of the museum

after a £47m refit in 2011. When the redevelopment

project began in 2008, the digital department didn’t

exist. Now, with more major capital work on the way

and the Art and Design and Science and Technology

galleries due to close soon for redevelopment,

Wallace is looking forward to digital having a

significant role when the galleries reopen in 2016.

“We started mid-way through the last

redevelopment and so our impact was fairly light,”

he says. “Now, it’s a much more interesting time

for us because we can look at how we make digital

a more integral and deliberate part of what gets

delivered.”

↑ Capture The Museum game players at National Museum of Scotland

www.nms.ac.uk

31 INTRODUCING

THE SYNCLIST

At Sync, we've collaborated with, spoken to and written about some amazing people working in the space where the arts meets technology

— people that we believe are key to continued innovation in Scotland and beyond. That's why we've decided to create the SyncList — an online showcase of talent that shouts about people rather than products.

It's a dynamic list that will of course evolve and grow, and you can view who's featured so far at: welcometosync.com/synclist. Here, though, are a few people to be getting on with...

32

GILLIAN EASSONPROJECT DESIGNER

DUNDEE

BEN TEMPLETONFOUNDER & DIRECTOR

THOUGHT DEN

BRISTOL

“I create ways for people to engage, connect

and collaborate, often designing the links between

organisations and audiences,” explains Gillian Easson.

“Supporting these online / offline communities enables

people to be active in shaping things that matter to

them, and helps organisations reach and better

engage audiences.” 

A project manager with Nesta from 2006—13,

Easson explains that she's inspired by "the moments

when creatives/organisations/audiences 'get' the

potential of digital, and then most critically use it

to enable and extend their practice — whether it's

to enhance their work artistically or to reach new

markets.”

While firmly embedded in the city's creative

community — she founded the online platform

Creative Dundee and led the development of

wedundee.com, part of the city's bid to be the

2017 UK City of Culture — Easson’s work is

national and international in scope.

“[I'm excited by] anything which encourages

people to come together and experience the world

in interesting ways — and leaves you thinking

it’s a little bit magic!”

www.gillianeasson.com

@gillianeasson

“Playfulness is at the heart of what we do at

Thought Den,” says Ben Templeton. “We specialise

in broadening and deepening audience engagement

in arts and culture.”

Thought Den has produced innovative and

characterful projects across web, mobile and

installation for the likes of Tate, Science Museum

and National Museums Scotland. An eagerness to

talk to and work with the people who will ultimately

interact with what they create is a hallmark of

Thought Den's approach.

“I love the content, the people and the challenge

of innovation,” says Templeton. “Despite the

supposed rapid march of technology, the principles

of interaction design and working with people haven’t

really changed for decades. Finding the sweet spot

is great fun — or put another way, incredibly

frustrating / eventually rewarding.”

Describing the UK's arts and culture scene as

“utterly incredible right now”, Templeton says: “In

terms of technology and culture coming together,

I think we're reaching a tipping point of mutual

understanding.”

www.thoughtden.co.uk

@thoughtben

33

BRIAN BAGLOWFOUNDER

SCOTTISH GAMES

NETWORK

DUNDEE

OONAGH MURPHY

ARTS MANAGER

WRITER & LECTURER

BELFAST

“The convergence between games and the rest

of the creative world is going to create entirely new

types of experience. It's going to be incredible.”

Brian Baglow works with and represents the

games industry in Scotland, helping it to evolve

and work more closely with the rest of the creative

industries. As such, he sees interactive media as

being about much more than games, apps or

‘digital art’.

“It's a transformative technology that is

fundamentally changing every aspect of the creative

industries,” he says, “from the way they're created

and distributed through to the way they're monetised,

consumed and even the way people experience them.”

Baglow mentions National Theatre of Scotland’s

work with game development studio Quartic Llama

on the horror game, Other, as one example of how the

arts and games industry can work together. “For me,

the most exciting projects are those which go beyond

‘gaming’,” he says, “bringing together the games

sector with other areas of the arts.”

www.scottishgames.net

@flackboy

“To most people, digital technologies are like

magic — cool but scary. I love it when I explain

a digital platform in plain English and see

someone’s whole approach change.”

Oonagh Murphy researches digital innovation

in the cultural sector, with a particular focus on

the scalability of emerging technologies for

small cultural organisations. “In short,“ she says,

“I help arts organisations with tiny budgets and

not enough staff to take the first steps in the

digital world.”

Murphy believes that the way digital

technologies are introduced and explained

is hugely important. “Plain English, a friendly

approach and simple anecdotes can make the

most complicated technologies seem simple

to anyone,” she says.

With the right approach, thinks Murphy,

the future is bright for the arts and digital:

“With an increased digital skills base across

arts organisations, the role of ‘digital’ staff

will move from content creation and delivery,

to management, strategy and training."

www.oonaghmurphy.com

@OonaghTweets

34

SARAH ELLISDIGITAL PRODUCER

ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY

STRATFORD-

UPON-AVON

TOM METCALFEPRODUCER

REACT OBJECTS SANDBOX

BRISTOL

“What excites me [about digital] is the

possibilities for transforming how creative work

is made,“ says Sarah Ellis. “What’s interesting

is how audiences are engaging with these new

platforms and how this is shifting the

relationship between art and society.”

As the Royal Shakespeare Company's (RSC)

Digital Producer, Ellis produces live and online

performances and projects that “reinterpret

Shakespeare for the digital age.”

It‘s a huge job that has seen the RSC working

with a variety of partners. “It involves exploring

new ideas, devising strategy, fundraising, making

new partnerships, commissioning artists and

technologists, mentoring, and engaging

audiences with the work.”

Ellis has also been working closely with

academics to understand the impact of digital

technologies on our engagement with the arts:

“The two main projects I’ve produced at the

RSC — myShakespeare and Midsummer Night’s

Dreaming — have, I hope, in some way explored

this and presented new questions into the

debate.”

www.rsc.org.uk

@scarahnellis

“Above all,“ says Tom Metcalfe, “my job

involves working in collaborative environments

with people that have diverse skill-sets,

backgrounds and expertise. Around that core,

there are many things that I get super-excited

about.”

Metcalfe is based at the Pervasive Media

Studio at Watershed. His work involves research

and enterprise in arts and creative technologies,

supporting and funding collaborations between

academics and creatives.

A practising designer (when time allows)

and co-founder of Fieldguide — an ‘occasional

collective and sometimes journal’ for people

interested in design, tech and society —

Metcalfe has a background in both industry

and academia.

And those things he's very excited about?

“The exploration of experiences in objects and

installations; design fictions and near-futures;

creating things that haven't previously existed;

and the journey through to elegant simplicity …”

tommetcalfe.com

@tommetcalfe

35

JOELI BREARLEYDIRECTOR

CULTURECODE INITIATIVE

MANCHESTER

ANNA HIGGSHEAD OF FILM 4·0

LONDON

“I ultimately get my kicks from watching people

learn, collaborate, co-create and develop new fruitful

relationships.”

As Director of CultureCode Initiative, Joeli

Brearley develops long-lasting sustainable

relationships between cultural professionals, artists,

computer programmers and creative technologists.

“When you place an artist with a technologist,

academic or scientist, this can drive the other

members of the team to repurpose and re-imagine

new ways of working,” she says.

CultureCode's approach involves rapid

prototyping, disruptive innovation and open data.

“Data excites me,” says Brearley, “and this includes

data visualisations and data art … I am always

interested in work that is being undertaken to try

and make data more meaningful for citizens.”

Brearley is also the Innovation Projects Officer

at FutureEverything, an R&D hub for digital culture,

and as part of this role was recently working with

artists and technologists in Russia.

“There is something very satisfying about taking

a process you have refined and tweaked and pored

over for many years in the UK to a different territory,

then watching as the magic unfolds.”

www.culturecode.co.uk

@Joeli_Brearley

“I am always learning and I love the openness of

the time we're working in now,” explains Anna Higgs.

“There's no one-size-fits-all model anymore, and

collaboration and communication is key to us all

moving forward together into an exciting future.”

Higgs‘ work as a film commissioner for Film4·0,

an innovation-driven talent and ideas hub within

Film4, involves helping to develop and finance feature

films. Specifically, she is interested in enabling

projects that are innovative in terms of storytelling

and audience engagement.

“I’m really excited about the power of multi-

platform storytelling,” she says. “Not the same story

being told across as many platforms as possible, but

really beautifully crafted journeys in which audiences

can explore as broadly or as deeply as they want to,

and where each platform (not necessarily digital)

brings something really unique, thanks to good

design and thoughtful development.”

While professing an aversion to futurology —

“unless you’re Marty McFly, we haven't been there

yet!” — Higgs knows what she wants the future

to look like: “I’m hoping that the future holds more

building of immersive worlds and experiences that

feed curiosity and bring joy, learning and revelation.”

www.film4.com/productions

@AnnaEHiggs

“DIGITAL —IT’S A WHOLE NEW MINDSET”

In the second of our Sync Sessions, two professionals from the worlds of theatre and visual arts in Scotland talk anonymously and candidly about their experience of digital technologies.

CHRIS SHARRATT

SYNC SESSIONS

37

“I think it’s integral … it’s just part of you as a company.” For the second of our Sync Sessions, we sat down with two senior arts professionals from the worlds of Scottish theatre and visual arts to discuss at length their relationship with digital.

Sync approached the discussion with no specific agenda. The purpose of the session was to explore how these arts professionals from two very different backgrounds use and view digital in their organisations. The information they provided will feed into Sync’s activities to support cultural organisations in Scotland to develop a more progressive relationship with technology and technologists.

Like the first Sync Session last year, in order for the participants to be open and candid about their thoughts and experiences, what they had to say is presented anonymously. What follows are the edited highlights — a snapshot of current thinking and a fascinating insight into the daily challenges and possibilities faced by the sector.

Whose job is digital?

“In the organisation I’m in, digital very much sits

with me. But that’s because the other members of

the team don’t want anything to do with it. I think

it is a little bit generational, too; my artistic director

is interested in the concept of it but just doesn’t

want to be involved in the reality of implementing

it. The younger people coming in to the creative

industries just naturally embrace it, but for some

of the older people — people who’ve been there for

a long time — either they don’t want to or haven’t

got time to or it’s not for them.”

“You can’t not know about or engage with digital.

The problem in terms of people’s time, and you see

it again and again, is that the digital stuff is always

delegated to one person. There just needs to be a

huge culture shift that it’s everyone’s job. A lot of

the fear is ‘I’ve got to do this on my own’.”

“Within any small arts organisation you tend to

be doing far more than your remit, so that extra thing

where you know you’re going to be the go-to person

for everything is a big one to take on. So I think it’s

more that the responsibility can be overwhelming,

rather than time.”

What do we mean when we say digital?

“That’s really hard to define, isn’t it? It’s like

electricity; it’s one of those terms we chuck around

and means a lot of things. Organisationally, at the

moment digital is seen as additional to your own

practice, in terms of platforms, in terms of your online

presence — whether that’s social media, website

presence. But that’s not how I personally think it

is — I think it’s integral, it’s like your show or flyers

you put out on the street, it’s just part of you as

a company. I work with a lot of very traditional

producers and I suppose they would see digital as

something extra, something additional, something

else. They’ll fit it into the old ways of working.” 3

> Dealing with the ‘weight ’ of digital

“I think it [digital] is weighted down by traditional

hierarchical structures that are artistic director-led,

rather than producer-led. As a model, that’s already

out of date, but to change it within the working

reality of a lot of theatre companies is a big job.

It’s old-fashioned structures — a system that doesn’t

work in a changing environment. I also think that it’s

a lot about protecting your artform. In theatre there’s

a strong idea that there’s something pure about live

theatre and we need to protect that, but it’s just a

nonsense, it’s not a threat.”

“For sculpture, there’s no issue of protecting the

artform. If anything we’re keen to get away from what

people think of as sculpture — bronze and marble,

etc. Not that we wouldn’t work with them, but the

more things going on the better. I think the

generational thing is interesting — there are still

an awful lot of people coming out of art school who

aren’t the most engaged with technology. The fine art

departments often seem to be the poor relations of

the art school, where the architects and designers

are all getting 3D printers, vacuum formers, laser

cutters — they’ve all got access to these things.

Whereas for fine art — nothing. I would expect

there to be more of a push coming from the recent

graduates in terms of using digital technologies,

but from my experience it’s not happening.”

Adapt and adopt or be left behind

“I was at an event recently and they had a systems

analyst talking about the way systems work, and

it made me see our company as a system within a

wider environment. He was saying that, when an

environment changes, if a system doesn’t change too

then it ceases to exist. And of course the environment

is changing, and all these little arts organisations are

run on systems that aren’t changing. What that really

impressed on me is that you have to change or you’ll

become extinct. And Scottish theatre is particularly

bad; it’s very much, ‘This is the way we do things.’”

“I think a lot of people think, ‘I’ll learn it [digital]

once and then that’s it.’ But of course you can’t, you

don’t just learn once, it’s a whole new mindset and

you just have to carry on learning. And I think maybe

a lot of people think, ‘I missed the boat from the

beginning, so how do I catch up now?”

39

Resistance to digital

“It can be hard to introduce digital in theatre.

The definitions of what people see as theatre are

very set. And the other thing about theatre is that

it is heavily unionised. And so to go into a BECTU

theatre and say, ‘Can we just do a bit of filming

backstage with one of the actresses trying on their

costumes’ — that can be an absolute nightmare,

a minefield. It’s all for good reasons, to protect

workers rights, but it’s like going back to the

Winter of Discontent in terms of negotiating

and mindsets — it’s very, very hard.”

“You have to experiment on the show you’ve

got and often the show isn’t perfect for what you

may want to do digitally; for example, the lighting

might be too dark. Our long-term goal is that

everything works together from scratch, but

theatre takes so long, it’s very difficult to do

quick experiments and progress more quickly.”

Two cultures clash

“There’s this sense in theatre of the live being

superior and something that must be preserved, and

what we’re trying to do with the recorded output is

make it not the same but of equal status … What we

want to experiment with is that when we make a film

it’s not just a recording — we can add extra context

to it, we can have the actress filmed walking into her

dressing room and getting into character. But at the

moment the two worlds of theatre and film are

meeting as a commissioning relationship — we’ll

commission you to film it, live stream it — rather

than a creative relationship as creative partners.

But it’s not about more people seeing a performance,

it’s about the screen-based audience and what they

expect artistically.”

The need for time and space

“What I find is that we don’t have any time to

play — we have these mammoth, long timescale

projects in theatre, so within that mindset you don’t

get to play around the edges with it [digital]. I think

what we miss is that ‘fail cheaply’ mentality. If

we fail in theatre, it’s very expensive. If there’s

something you can do and try out and it doesn’t cost

a lot of money then that’s really exciting and it might

lead somewhere, and that’s definitely what’s missing

with us at the moment when it comes to digital.”

What needs to change: 1. Funding structures

“What’s not changed and what needs to change

is the funding structure. So, if you apply for money

you have to say what are the outcomes of your

project, and of course if you’re doing a digital project,

your answer might be: ‘Don’t know’. But you won’t

get the money if you say that. So how do you

experiment, open up the possibilities of the unknown,

if even before you get the money for a project you

have to think through what the outcomes are, and

then know when you’re doing the project that at the

end you have to tick a box to say that it happened?

Even with funding that’s about innovation, you have

to say what the outcome will be, what will happen.”

What needs to change: 2. Organisations

“The top-down structure in terms of funders is

not really fit for purpose, but it also doesn’t work

organisationally either. Key ideas might come from

an intern, or the person who works in the box office

and is bored out of their head and has time on their

hands. There are recent graduates with up-to-date

knowledge and enthusiasm and they’re not being

tapped into when you’ve got over-worked, underpaid

artistic people at the top who haven’t got the time

or the headspace or the knowledge to interact and

come up with ideas.” 3

40

> More collaboration, please

“What would be really useful for us and the sector

as a whole is the sense of more collaboration. We’re

all grappling with what websites we should have,

what computer systems we should have, and trying

to find somebody — because we can’t afford to

employ someone — who can do that role for us …

I think there’s a lot of organisations like us grappling

with the same questions but not talking to each other

or aware of each other or sharing resources. And I

think a lot of theatre companies like us are sticking

their heads in the sand because they just don’t know

what to do about it.”

But make it the right kind of collaboration…

“Collaboration is good but you have to make sure

you don’t end up doing design by committee, which

just kills any sense of creativity, usability, flexibility.”

Working with higher education

“One of the key things and joys I have had is

working with universities… What they’ve offered

is just phenomenal: business innovation, interns,

academic help, funding. I don’t think enough arts

organisations are making the most of the resources

that they have, at a time when universities are under

immense pressure around employability of students

and they really want to engage with the sector.”

Experiment until it breaks

“Experimentation is generally what the arts are

good for … It’s about empowering people to break

websites and giving them access to different bits of

kit — because it’s a tool, at the end of the day, which

most people are willing to embrace if you give them

the permission. It’s about not being afraid to push

things a little and to play about with it.”

What ’s going on? Where will it go?

“One of the things I took away from a recent digital

conference I attended was that someone said 65%

of jobs for students hadn’t been invented yet, and

I have to think about that as an organisation and

what our jobs are going to be in the future. We can

employ people but what does that mean, where will

it go? I find that hugely exciting. What’s going on in

that fringe world?” :

“I think digital is weighted down by traditional hierarchical structures that are artistic director-led, rather than producer-led. As a model, that’s already out of date.”

41

PROCESS -FOCUSED

The arts sector needs to shift its funding focus from projects and products to the how and why of process.

ROHAN GUNATILLAKE

COMMENT

42

> We are currently making an important

mistake when telling the story of digital innovation

in the arts — we are focusing on projects and

products instead of process.

It's understandable of course — after all, it

can be very exciting to hear in detail how a project

was delivered. We enjoy seeing screenshots of the

latest mobile apps and marvel at the technical skill

of the developer teams while nodding approvingly

at the (seemingly) all-positive user feedback. But

when the short-lived inspiration dies out and we're

back in the day job with our barely functioning IT,

our extremely tight budgets and our overflowing

inboxes, the prospect of making amazing digital

work feels at best a million miles away, and at

worst intimidating or depressing.

Funders make the same mistake. Having been

a funder myself, I know how attractive it can be to

fund product — we now live in an age where a credit

in an iPhone app is the equivalent of having your

name etched on a shiny brass plaque on the side

of a new building. But the focus on funding and

valorising individual projects and particular

technologies has three main problems.

First, when funders dangle relatively large carrots

but then provide no means or guidance for detailed

idea development, validation and prototyping, it

biases that funding towards more resource-rich

organisations, results in predictable projects and

increases the risk for that investment capital.

The second problem of focusing on projects

is that when the funding closes and the project is

complete, there is no accessible legacy for the wider

sector to progress on their own authentic innovation

journey. The only option is to copy projects that may

not be relevant to the wider or more specific context.

Finally, by making training programmes about

particular technologies rather than more sustainable

ways to keep abreast of the latest developments,

knowledge becomes out of date at the rate of change

of technology — which as you've probably noticed

is rather quick.

What this conversation urgently needs is less

‘what?’ and more ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ Finding out the

intricate details of how a national performing arts

company delivered a live-streaming project is only

of limited value to a small regional gallery. But if they

understood more about why the project was the best

of all the options available; more about how it was

taken from idea to full production, then that is

transferable learning that can be adapted to

the gallery's own particular context.

In order for this shift to happen, funders

and policy makers need to start prioritising the

development and embedding of innovation processes

instead of the production of individual innovation

projects. While it's harder to stick a plaque on a

process, unless this change in emphasis occurs, the

arts sector will continue to be given lots of tasty fish,

but will still have no means by which to catch any.

The great thing about innovation processes is

that by their very nature they create projects. So, if

this change in approach were to happen, there would

still be good projects, but also sustainable ways by

which creative talent and arts organisations can

explore the use of digital tools and digital thinking

in their practice.

43

As with all important directions for policy

development, there are already a number of instances

where the innovation process is the star. Hackdays

such as Digital Sizzle's Art Hack have been

a phenomenon in the last three years, and while

the resulting projects continue to create fascinating

stories, people who participate understand that it

is the nature of the event itself that is most

transformative; the process helps those working

in the arts to move beyond the limitations of a

transactional relationship with digital talent.

The Sandbox family of projects pioneered by

Watershed under the visionary leadership of Clare

Reddington has five years' experience of focusing

on process, showing how to make amazing new work

in a range of contexts. Festival Design DNA is an

impressive set of service design methods developed

and shared by Edinburgh's Festivals to give arts

organisations an end-to-end and highly practical

process, from project idea generation to full delivery.

As a sector, we need to develop a larger palette

of accessible innovation processes and to get better

at replicating those that already work very well. In

the places where the arts meets digital, the last five

years has seen funding, policy making and support

programmes get stuck on product and a provision

that is patchy and gives undue privilege to the

parochial. Now is the time for genuine ambition,

a progressive vision and remarkable work.

Based on our experience with Sync, we believe

that for this to happen we need to reframe policy

and systems to prioritise practice, people and process.

The UK is fortunate to have a generation of producers

on the ground right now with the talent, experience

and vision to lead this conversation. :

This article was originally published by Guardian Culture Professionals Network.

“Funders and policy makers need to prioritise the development and embedding of innovation processes instead of the production of individual projects.”

CULTURE HACK SCOTLAND 2013— THE REVIEW

The third annual Culture Hack Scotland happened over a hot summer weekend in Glasgow, with 23 incredible projects created in 48 hours. Here’s a snapshot of what went on.

DAVID KETTLE

CULTURE HACK SCOTLAND

45

The weekend’s first hack, joked Sync co-

producer Rohan Gunatillake, was the installation

of a kitchen — part of the transformation of the

third floor of The Whisky Bond in Glasgow for Culture

Hack Scotland. It’s second was over even before

Gunatillake and fellow Sync producer Suzy Glass had

finished their introductions. Syd Lawrence of Twilio

had sat quietly at the back of the throng, setting up

a single mobile number that would trigger texts to

the whole Sync team in case of queries and

suggestions, then text them back once the issue

was resolved.

Enthusiasm, eagerness to share and — let’s

face it — sheer speed of working were essential

and clearly visible ingredients right from the start,

even at the informal Friday-

night opening party. Strangers

introduced themselves,

tentative bonds were forged,

skills noted and shared.

This was the event’s third

outing. Beginning as a tentative 24-hour project

in Edinburgh in 2011, it’s grown ever since — in

participant numbers, duration, diversity and sheer

ambition. Now an adventure playground for geeks,

technologists, artists and anyone interested in the

blurred edges between art and technology, its aims,

said Gunatillake, were clear: “To re-imagine what it

might be like if the arts and technology got on like

good friends — in fact, like best friends — who

went on amazing adventures together.”

The fuel for these adventures came from three

sorts of resources: data, materials and people.

Materials for the weekend ranged from a bike to

a sewing machine to the reality-shifting Oculus Rift

virtual reality headset. The data included paintings

from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, birdsong

from composer Hanna Tuulikki’s Away with the Birds

project, and even Creative Scotland’s sensitive yet

voyeuristically compelling arts funding data.

By Saturday, loose teams had formed and the

fine detail of projects was the subject of heated

discussion. One quartet had hit upon realising the

Glasgow Sculpture Studios’ membership data as

— yes — a sculpture. But it

was a sculpture that would be

assembled according to users’

whims from small tokens

slotted together.

Standing around a

whiteboard criss-crossed with shapes and patterns,

and with multicoloured stickies in hand, the foursome

were deep in the design process. Should those

component parts be shaped to symbolise the

different member strands? Or would that be asking

too much of the Flux Laser Studio team, on standby

next door to cut out the shapes? Should they simply

use different colours or designs instead? Would

that make the final sculpture too uniform, or too

colourful?

Elsewhere, designer Roy Shearer was busy

tinkering with the controls of a sewing machine.

He wanted to see if he could control it using a

computer, he explained, as he applied a glue gun

to a small piece of hardboard. And if that worked,

he had bigger ambitions for the set-up. 3

“An adventure playground for geeks, technologists, artists and anyone interested in the blurred edges between art and technology.”

46

> At the other end of the busy workshop space,

an island was being created by product and furniture

designer Sam Frankland and designer and visual

artist Dougie Chalmers. Visitors to their scaled-down

cardboard version of Canna would hear birdsong

collected on the real island, along with Hanna

Tuulikki’s composed music from Away with the Birds,

all triggered by pressure-sensitive pads under their

feet.

“There are going to be four sensors that allow

users to navigate the space,” explained Chalmers,

while Frankland was busy smoothing over a tin-foil

square that would act as his prototype pad. “They

work independently, but they also communicate with

each other, so if two people are in the space at the

same time, it’ll sound different to if there’s just one.

We’ve got a total of 16 different sounds depending

on how many users there are.”

Tuulikki’s birdsong data was proving popular,

and it was the inspiration behind a very different

project from a team including Sync technology lead

Devon Walshe. “We’re building a kind of interactive

game using the Oculus Rift, the VR headset," he

explained. "It’s using the patterns of sightings of

particular birds on the islands, and also the songs

themselves.”

What he had in mind was an ambitious virtual-

reality vision of the island of Rhum, allowing the user

to experience the island and its birdlife through the

headset. “There will be birds flying around that you

can interact with. When you’re close to them you’ll

start to hear their songs.”

There was plenty of activity on Culture Hack

Scotland’s first full day — a web TV programme

(which the participants named Live and Hacking)

being planned, a great deal of perspex being cut

and engraved — but there was also the sense of

ideas still in flux, new projects on the verge of

springing to life, and participants happy to discuss

their thinking. By Sunday morning, with the project

deadline only a few hours away, heads were down

and warnings issued not to disturb those hard

at work.

The weekend culminated in the grand unveiling

of the weekend’s projects, which took place in the

company of the hack’s three judges — game designer

Sophia George, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s

digital producer Sarah Ellis, and Simon Kirby,

professor of language evolution at the University

of Edinburgh and member of arts collective FOUND.

The 23 projects showed the many ways that

participants had interpreted Gunatillake’s opening

request for them to embrace the unexpected. An

internet high-five machine (commended by games

designer Sophia George) solved the problem of those

working from home being stuck at their computers

with little motivation or recognition for their

achievements. A moveable cardboard hand strapped

to their chairs would allow them to virtually high-five

anyone in the same network via the internet.

Musician and developer Yann Seznec, meanwhile,

had created an online game from Creative Scotland’s

funding data that challenged users to guess how

much financial support specific arts projects had

received. This game, hilarious yet deadly serious,

was commended by Simon Kirby: “It’s brilliant in

its simplicity, and a genuine provocation.” 3

→ Culture Hack Scotland 2013. All photos by Chris Scott

47

48

> Judge Sarah Ellis’ winning project was Blind

Data, developer Phil Leggetter’s large-scale database

that brought together all of the weekend’s data to

allow broad searches and the linking of disparate

material. Creative Carnage (another of Sophia

George’s commendations) hooked up Oliver Searle’s

2003 orchestral piece My Day of Carnage to LEDs on

an engraved perspex screen, highlighting with flashes

of varying brightness which instruments were playing

and when. And We Are Albert Drive (another of Simon

Kirby’s commendations) embedded social media from

a large-scale Glasgow community project in an

interactive bench that would allow Albert Drive

residents themselves to explore their own material.

The Glasgow Sculpture Studios membership

project had become MASS Social Sculpture, an

elegant assemblage of pristine, interlocking shapes

that seemed organic in its forms, yet also provided

a refreshingly unmediated delivery of the data it

represented. It was Simon Kirby’s winner: “The

cherry on the cake,” he said, “is how appropriate

this visualisation is to the source of the data.”

As had become increasingly clear over the 48

hours, the birdsong data on offer had inspired several

projects, from Kraig Walker and Alistair MacDonald’s

mobile jukebox app that allowed up to 20 users to

play Tuulikki’s music together, to the VR headset

birdsong tour of Rhum.

Roy Shearer’s computerised tailoring experiments

had led to a sewing machine that functioned

according to audio input — meaning that Tuulikki’s

birdsong music could be used to generate costumes

for its own future performances. And Canna Hear the

Birds, the large-scale map of Canna whose sensors

triggered bird audio clips, was Sophia George’s

winning project — and was held in wonder by

other participants.

As the Culture Hack Scotland weekend

exhaustedly wound down, there was the feeling that

its project outcomes, as well as the new relationships

it had encouraged, would take months to assimilate

and digest. It was a short burst of startlingly intense

creativity and collaboration, forming new friendships

and showing what the arts and technology could

achieve together.

“I’m completely bowled over by what I’ve seen

today,” said judge Simon Kirby, summing up.

“This would be an amazing outcome from a year’s

work, let along from 48 hours.” :

Culture Hack Scotland 2013 was held July 12—14 at The Whisky Bond, Glasgow. You can review the 23 projects in more detail at :

www.welcometosync.com/category/chs-2013

49

GEEKS, HOSTS AND A MEETING OF MINDS

CHRIS SHARRATT

At Sync’s recent meet-up in Edinburgh, participants in the Geeks-in-Residence programme came together to share their thoughts and experiences.

GEEKS-IN-RESIDENCE

50

> Newcastle-based developer Alistair

Macdonald is, in many ways, an über geek. “I just

like to prototype things and move on,” he says with

a smile. For Sync’s 2012 Geeks-in-Residence

programme, he was paired with Andy Young from

Snook and hosted by the Edinburgh Military Tattoo,

a cultural organisation very much in the business

of delivering tangible outcomes.

Such pairings are, in part, what Sync’s Geeks

programme is all about: bringing together people

and organisations who on the surface may appear

worlds apart, but who share a willingness to embrace

innovation in the arts. That doesn’t, and shouldn’t,

mean that all parties see eye-to-eye on everything

all of the time, as Macdonald is happy to point out.

“In the end, the Tattoo wanted the confidence

of a major technology partner,” he says, explaining

why the idea to involve the event’s audience and

their phones in a colour coordinated pixel-patterned

finale didn’t quite happen for 2013, despite the great

enthusiasm of all those involved. Yet while the

residency is now over, the project is still very much

alive — there’s always next year.

Macdonald was sharing his experiences during

a recent gathering of geeks (and a few hosts, too)

at Summerhall in Edinburgh. Not everyone involved

in the programme over the last two years could be

there, but those who did make it were open and

insightful about their work. And while the projects

have ranged from Twitter-based audience

development initiatives (macrobert arts centre,

Stirling) to online visual timelines (Stills Gallery,

Edinburgh), the recurring theme on the day was

very much that it isn’t actually the end product that’s

most important — the process of exploration and

collaboration is what’s really exciting.

Perhaps the most extreme example of this open

brief approach was the pairing of Stef Lewandowski

with Eigg Box. Lewandowski arrived on the remote

Scottish island of Eigg after a 36-hour journey from

London. He had no idea what he was going to be

doing during his brief stay, and it quickly became

clear that Eigg Box’s Lucy Conway wasn’t sure either.

But rather than this being problematic, it came to

define the short but influential residency, the

reverberations of which are still being felt on Eigg

and in Stef’s work back in London. “I treated the

residency like a big hack day,” he says. “I realised

that it was the process of doing that was the point,

so the idea was not to finish anything, but instead

to do lots of tiny experiments.”

The space to experiment and explore is a key

aspect of the Geeks programme. For Jackie Wylie,

Artistic Director at The Arches, Glasgow, this is a

natural extension of the everyday activities at this

lively theatre, music and club venue. “The Arches

is built around the idea of experimentation, it’s

what we do,” she says. Wylie and the venue’s geek,

Edinburgh-based web developer Hassy Veldstra,

were in the process of formulating the shape

of their 2013 residency. “The first thing we’ve

been trying to figure out is what the residency

shouldn’t be,” explains Veldstra. 3

“I realised that it was the process of doing that was the point, so the idea was not to finish anything but instead to do lots of tiny experiments.”

51

← (Previous spread) Data necklace by Stef Lewandowski

← Pens and stickies at the ready for macrobert design session

↙ Data necklace by Stef Lewandowski

↓ The macrobert design session

↓ The bus stop on Eigg

> For Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) geek Trevor

Fountain and festival Director Sorcha Carey, the

residency presented a number of challenges, with

Fountain explaining that, after a few false starts,

“we got there in the last week [of the month-long

festival].” One aspect of the process of getting there

was realising that imposing a digital solution on

an artist's work is inherently problematic — the

technologist needs to be invited by the artist. For

that to happen, time and space is needed to establish

a creative relationship.

“When I first heard about the Geeks programme,

I thought in terms of it helping us deliver things

like, perhaps, a mobile app,” says EAF’s Director,

explaining how being involved had shifted her

thinking. In the end, Fountain worked on a digital

composing device designed to complement Sarah

Kenchington's defiantly analogue Wind Pipes for

Edinburgh, a playable sculpture. But rather than

creating a tangible ‘thing’, what the residency has

produced so far has been a wealth of process and

experience to mull over and learn from.

In contrast, a web app is exactly what macrobert

arts centre, part of the 2012 programme, got from

its geeks residency. “It was quite a problem-solving

approach,” explains Phil Leggetter, a real-time web

development specialist who worked with Andy Young

on the project. After design sessions led by Young

that established the parameters for the residency,

the pair set about creating Middlemans, a Twitter-

based tool to digitally earmark users who best

represent macrobert’s intended audience. The arts

venue has already used Middlemans to recruit digital

ambassadors to tweet about its events.

OUT OF THE EIGG BOX THINKING Lucy Conway’s experience as a host in round one of Sync’s Geeks-in-Residence programme had a huge impact on her organisation, Eigg Box, and her wider thinking. Here, she explains what she learnt.

Working fast can be good.

The act of moving quickly from

idea to developing, testing and

sharing, can be incredibly

powerful.

It’s good to share. Sharing

ideas or projects at an early stage,

and asking for feedback, not only

improves a good idea, it can also

save masses of time if it’s a

bad one.

Bury babies. Sometimes,

no matter how wonderful you

think an idea is, if it’s been tested,

refined and tested again and your

hand is still not being bitten off,

maybe it’s time to bury that idea

and use your time on something

more profitable.

Be brave. Try something

you haven’t done, don’t be afraid

of failure, admit what you don’t

know.

Talking while walking is

brilliant. Want to get something

sorted? Go for a walk together

and talk about it. Walking gets

the creative head juices flowing

and problem solving and new

ideas come naturally. D

Part of what was revealed by this meet-up

is how hugely different each residency has been,

from Yann Seznec’s stalled work with Scottish Opera

in round one of the geeks programme, to Kate Ho’s

fast-moving and productive 2013 residency with

National Theatre of Scotland. There is no standard

model — each project is defined by the people

involved in it. That’s not an excuse for flabby thinking

or adopting an ‘anything goes’ attitude. As Stef

Lewandowski puts it: “You have to have some

framework, some methodology.” The key, it seems,

is being adaptable and responsive enough to make

sure that it’s a framework that supports innovation,

rather than constrains it. :

GEEKS & HOSTS2012

+ Alistair Macdonald and Andy Young with Edinburgh Military Tattoo

+ Phil Leggetter and Andy Young with macrobert arts centre, Stirling

+ Yann Seznec with Scottish Opera

+ Denise Ross with Stills Gallery, Edinburgh

+ Stef Lewandowski with Eigg Box

2013

+ Alasdair Campbell with Bodysurf Scotland, Moray

+ Trevor Fountain with Edinburgh Art Festival

+ Kate Ho with National Theatre of Scotland

+ Hassy Veldstra with The Arches, Glasgow

+ Alexander Laing with Visible Fictions, Glasgow With support from Andy Young

Accepting equity of (different)

expertise can produce incredible

results. A lack of knowledge of

some things shouldn’t take away

from expertise in others. When

you are doing a residency

together, each set of expertise

is of equal value and interest.

Don’t be digi-scared. It’s 

just a set of tools that offer

an enormous range of fantastic

ways to make something really

beautiful, exciting or profitable. 

Know what your idea is and

what digital solution you might

need. This doesn’t mean you need

to have the project set in stone

before you start, but you should

have the central idea sharp

in your mind. Even for the

digi-scared, it’s much simpler

searching through the vast array

of digital tools when you have

a clear idea of what you want to

make happen. And having found

one tool, you can always go back

to the digital toolbox for more.

Cultivate curiosity. Look

beyond whatever you or someone

else has made and explore how

things work, and how they could

be made better, adapted, involve

other people, or be used in

another context.

www.eiggbox.com

LAST WORD

SYNC: ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS

This third issue of SyncTank marks the end

of the first two years of our activities, designed

to support cultural organisations in Scotland develop

a more progressive relationship with technology and

technologists.

There are some very obvious results from Sync:

the dozens of prototypes made at Culture Hack

Scotland in 2012 and 2013, and the many more

relationships that were formed through the making;

the projects, experiences and transferred learning

from our Geeks-in-Residence placements with ten

cultural hosts; the hundreds of exciting stories

featured on SyncTank both online and in print.

There are some less obvious results, too.

Working with and thinking about this thing called

digital culture has meant engaging with a lot of

people and organisations. Through this and our own

conversations, we noticed that the issues we were

identifying were not being raised or given a public

platform elsewhere. Issues like the existence

of digital fear amongst senior arts leaders; the need

for innovation funding to support the development

of people rather than products; the recognition that

human factors are just as important as business or

technical ones when it comes to using digital tools

and digital thinking.

We started Sync with the idea that there were

new ways to understand and frame digital innovation

in the arts and we are incredibly grateful to Creative

Scotland for their support and the creative licence to

evolve our work and thinking in response to what we

have learned. We are also grateful to the thousands

of people in Scotland, the UK and beyond who have

engaged with what we do.

Sync has changed a great deal in its first two

years. Our experiences in year one challenged some

of our fundamental assumptions and we changed and

adapted our approach and programme accordingly.

What we have discovered and learned can be

summarised almost too simply: if we want a

flourishing meeting place between the arts and

technology,  and if we want this to be sustainable

and adaptable in a rapidly changing environment,

we need to invest, support and trust in people,

processes and practice.

If you would like to hear more about what might

happen next, please do join our mailing list. You

can also email us at hello@welcometosync.com

or get in contact via Twitter @synchq

SYNc TEAM, NovEMbEr 2013

1

55

THE DIGITAL CULTURE MAGAZINE YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED

publiShEd bY SYNc

welcometosync.com

@synchq