Friends of the BBC Creative Archive

As the BBC announces a “radical manifesto” for its future, heavy on digital Britain and “public value”, I’ve come across a campaign for the BBC Creative Archive. So far the main action has been an open letter, urging that the archive should be: broad, accessible, free (for non-commercial use), whole (i.e. not just excerpts of […]

Is digital cinema fixated with wide shots?

In an earlier posting I quoted George Lucas playing down the impact of digital technologies on film-making: “a camera is a camera is a camera so it doesn’t really make any difference… You frame the film the same… the aesthetics are exactly the same.” But critic Mark Cousins suggests in the June issue of Prospect […]

David Toop radio interview

For the next week (until end of 18 June) you can hear David Toop being interviewed on the latest BBC Mixing It programme, focusing on his new book Haunted Weather. The extended discussion touches on the effect of digital technologies on music, improvising traditions and what he likes about the Japanese music scene. The interview […]

Wikis and learning

I don’t fully understand the technology that underpins what a wiki is and this article on educational wikis doesn’t fully enlighten me. But it doesn’t assume any knowledge, and is reasonably concise. It’s important to remember that the web as we know it provides only a limited subset of the features that were envisaged and […]

Puttnam on digital impact: my notes

David Puttnam’s lecture this evening focused on skills (he spends a fair bit of his time advising the Department for Education and Skills these days) and on intervention to stimulate digital distribution and exhibition of films in the UK (he’s a Labour peer). He addressed the potential impact of digital technologies on production of films/motion […]

Museums and online learning: a case study

The role of museums in online teaching, learning and research is a sophisticated yet concise paper that gives an account of how the J. Paul Getty Museum has developed its thinking and practice in providing digital resources to support teaching, learning and research, based on its collection. The paper is interesting for its frank assessment […]