Brief notes and thoughts for March 2021
This outing is a bit of a theme issue on digital arts strategies in the Covid era.
Acknowledging dark times in the arts
I have my beefs with the Globe and Mail, but I’ve been glad to see them taking this issue seriously, including in an excellent piece this week (apologies if the paywall gets you):
When the music’s over: COVID-19 decimated the arts in Canada, and the worst may be yet to come
New federal funding opportunities
In response to the challenging times, the Canadian government has recently been ramping up emergency arts funding, mostly through the Canada Council. The new Digital Now program stood out to me as interesting:
https://canadacouncil.ca/funding/strategic-funds/digital-now
Live digital performances: field report
We’ve been seeing some impressive innovation and experimentation in the digital sphere in response to the pandemic. I asked list member Michael Plater Findlay, of long-lived Guelph band The Kramdens, about the group’s recent digital live (no physical in-house audience) performance at Guelph's River Run Centre. Here's his impression:
“We were each behind these plexiglass shields. The only sounds were from our amps and monitors – it didn’t sound like being on stage at all. There was a video monitor for social media, and we could interact with people who were posting, which was cool. And the sound quality and production was fantastic – the tech folks at River Run are real pros. I think those higher production values are non-optional to making these streaming ‘live’ shows palatable to audiences, which is a tough thing for a lot of emerging artists who don’t have the access.”
You can watch the recorded stream here. Production values are indeed impressive.
Crypto to the rescue?
Proponents of blockchain technology claim that the space will offer an entirely new way for creators to share and profit from their work. More on this to come, but for now I’ll just note that crypto-based NFT art went viral this week on news of the sale of a tokenized digital artwork by Beeple for US $69 million. Canada’s Grimes, being Grimes, has also been in on the action. Flash in the pan or hopeful new art medium? Not sure.
(If you have no idea what an NFT is: it stands for non-fungible token and refers to a crypto standard that uses the blockchain to certify that a digital file – e.g., an image – is the one and only “official” version. Click here for more additional information than you probably ever would want.
Opportunity: create and sell an NFT with our help
We happen to have some technical expertise around crypto in house at Only Connect. Let me know if you have questions or are interested in releasing your own NFT-based artwork with our help (free of charge, of course).
Quote I’ve been pondering
“I can think. I can wait. I can fast.”
-Herman Hesse (from Siddhartha)
That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading this far, and let me know with updates from your end, questions, thoughts, story ideas, hot tips, etc., at nicholascarldinka@gmail.com.