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By James Kelly, February 18, 2010

Duke Special: waiting for your call

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Thanks to Business to Arts for their recent tweet on the Pledge Music site. Readers of artsaudiences.ie may recall that last year we posted an article on Artistshare, a US based web organisation which enables those interested in the arts to directly provide project-specific funding to artists of their choice.

As with Artistshare, Pledge Music enables the individual to contribute at a variety of levels – in the example of Duke Special, £11 will buy you a signed EP, £55 would get a phonecall with the artist, and for £300 you could have dinner with the man himself.

Where the UK based Pledge Music surpasses Artistshare, is in the sense of community it builds around this new media patronage.  The site has a high degree of social media functionality, and it incorporates donations to charities at the core of its activity.

Of course a site such as this can only succeed with a heavy inward traffic, and so the websites of featured artists must have links from their site into Pledge Music. Duke Special’s homepage has a prominent link to the Pledge Music site, as well as details of his upcoming Pledge concerts. It all seems to be working for him, he has received pledges 30% in excess of his initial requirement.

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By James Kelly, January 25, 2010

CMC’s new home page

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The Contemporary Music Centre has relaunched it’s website. With a new look home page which places an an increased emphasis on social networking and news, the site is nice to look at, easy to negotiate, and has a very dynamic feel to it.

As well as offering the visitor video and audio, the home page includes links to all the Centre’s different sites, including Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and MySpace, as well as featuring a feed to the CMC twitter page, meaning users can access the latest information on news and events.

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By James Kelly, September 21, 2009

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Fancy seeing the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra on October 4th? Tickets are still available for their forthcoming performance of Chopin’s 1st and 2nd Piano Concertos, at a price of €9.90 a head.

The catch is, of course, that you will experience this concert live (8pm, Berlin time) via broadband beamed into the comfort of your own living room (kitchen, bedroom or study)… what you lose on the physical experience, you gain on savings (no need for flights / babysitters / taxis etc).

Launched at the end of 2008, the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall is an exciting development, and no doubt a sign of things to come over the coming years. Such online experiences will never replace the actual experience of attending a performance, and in this sense (I hope) would not compete with the live experience.

Rather, could it be the case that an increasingly diverse range of high quality artistic experiences will become available in the comfort of our own living room, providing stiff competition for television, which has long held a monopoly on such matters?

Faced with the choice of an evening with the Berlin Philharmonic, two hours of ‘Friends’, or another indepth report on ‘the crash’, the philharmonic could well win out.

It’s worth mentioning that there are still some barriers to be overcome – for one thing, computers on the whole still occupy a different space in our homes, and are more often located in a work context than a leisure one (e.g. in the not so comfortable ‘home office’). Secondly, you need a very good broadband signal to guarantee an uninterrupted experience. However, it is early days, and over the coming few years these barriers will be overcome.

I’ve yet to view a performance, and would be keen to hear if anyone has given it a go?

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Appearing one night only – Berlin Philharmonic – neat dress essential

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By James Kelly, August 17, 2009

Many will be familiar with TED – the ‘ideas’ conference which takes place annually in Long Beach, California. For those unfamiliar, the TED site is well worth a look – with hundreds of presentations on every kind of subject from becoming a buddha to the future of the electric car, there is, as the saying goes, something for everyone.

The TED site says; “We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world“, so in this context it’s great to see a lot of interesting arts material to be found here. Some examples;

A talk by Brazilian visual artist Vik Muniz, (readers may have seen a solo exhibition of his work in IMMA some years back)

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an inspiring look at classical music and ‘one-buttock’ piano playing….

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Finally, poetry like I’ve never heard it performed before;

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By James Kelly, August 13, 2009

Artistshare is an interesting organistion based in the US. They provide a opportunity for those interested in the arts to provide funding for artists to make work.

Rather than looking to attract a small number of large funders, they’ve used the internet to “allows fans to fund and directly participate in the projects of their favorite artists”.

As with many traditional friends schemes, there are various levels at which a fan can engage. Depending on the project, fans can pay anything from $10 (for a download) to $5,000 (to get a producers credit / dinner with the band etc, etc.).

They mostly seem to work in the area of music, but have also support film production and literature.

Here’s Artistshare’s CEO explaining what they do:

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Could something like this work in Ireland? Maybe there are already examples of organisations working like this in Ireland already. If so it would be great to hear…