Broadcast media has undergone rapid transformation.
There is a new economy operating in the broadcast sector. Large numbers of new channels are seeking low-budget content. The old, analogue terrestrial channels are being squeezed financially; mainstream programming predominates while new channels are expected to cater to the "niche" or specialist audiences. The Turner Prize continues to be a successful focal point for the Tate and for contemporary art, but it is difficult to foresee new collaborative opportunities arising with terrestrial broadcasters in the future.
The Internet has brought unprecedented opportunity for self-distribution
The development of the World Wide Web into a widely used medium has put the onus back onto cultural institutions to create media content and take charge of their own distribution. With this control however, comes a new set of pressures and resource implications. The Tate has made a firm step into this arena with the development of a very successful website, and intends to develop this further in the medium term with its planned "web phase II".
Powerful database-driven software tools are being adopted to manage the Tate's collection of more than 50,000 works of British Art
Following practice developed in other museums and galleries, it is planned that records related to the collection will be transferred to a powerful new "collections management" tool which stores information about the works themselves, their condition, movements and loans. This tool will affect and improve the day to day working of almost all of the Tate's staff, and this will be its primary function. However the tool is also likely to incorporate the possibility of a web-browser based interface available to the public and the integration of links to further information and assets related to the collection
Digitisation of the Tate’s collection is continuing, developing the potential of digital media for conservation, publishing and distribution.
The Heritage Lottery funded British Art Information Project (BAIP) provides for the creation and storage of digital images of almost the entire Tate Collection, together with "glossary" information. The objective is for this database of images to enhance access to the collection and become an extensive, core resource for the public on British Art.
The Tate itself - its buildings and its programme - is growing in both scale and confidence.
The opening of Tate Modern at Bankside in Spring 2000, and the launch of Tate British at Millbank, begins a new chapter in the Tate's history. This, combined with the programmes at Tate Liverpool and Tate St. Ives, means that levels of activity is set to rise considerably. The number of exhibitions will grow, supported by a new pluralistic approach to interpretation, integrated with an increasingly diverse calendar of talks, seminars, lectures, education programmes and publications. A new identity for the Tate will be launched concurrently. All of this activity can be seen as potentially distributable beyond the walls of the Tate Galleries, developing the Tate’s ambition to become a world centre of information on British and modern Art, and potentially enhancing both the quantity and quality of visitor experiences.
Artists working with new media are making small-scale but significant
interventions that are testing and developing the potential of new media forms.
In the few short years that interactive and digital media has been being developed, most commercial concerns have merely replicated the functions of old analogue media, using digital means. The work of some artists, however, can be seen as making experiments that are pointing towards a more media-specific approach, enriching both the visual arts and discourse around art and media developments while bringing challenges to both. One example is the recent Tate Modern pre-opening project: Broadcast by Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie.
1.3 Locating Opportunities, Positioning the Tate
The challenge facing the Tate is to develop a strategy that integrates all of these developments. As has already been well argued in the "Digital Media Strategy" discussion paper for Senior Management Group by Vicki Porter and Sandy Nairne, there is great potential and a number of significant digital projects underway, but still the risk of failures of co-ordination and missed opportunities.
The "Digital Media Strategy" paper also points out that a long term strategy is required within which short term steps should be taken. This paper concurs with that argument, but extends it further.
This paper pre-supposes that digital media is as-yet young and unformed. New media developments and new relationships between media are unpredictable. At this stage there are no right answers or correct methods. However, large cultural institutions such as the Tate are in the position to help shape the new digital culture. Identifying and developing a set of progressions into digital media is, first and foremost, a matter of vision, much less a matter of management or technology. The frequently-asked-question: how do we respond to digital technologies? might be replaced with an enquiry into the kind of digital culture that we want. Digital media has the potential to shift and shape the role of the gallery, but also, in these early days, to affect the technologies themselves.
The mould is not yet cast on fundamental issues such as levels of access to information about and around public collections, access and availability of copyright material, the allowances for criticism and review/fair use, payments for networked access to specialist information, not to mention the full potential and audience patterns for using new forms of content such as distance learning tools, streaming media events and interactive audio-visual archives. Relationships between old and new media are in an experimental stage, and the questions of access to the new channels and new media are also unresolved.
Specifically in the museums sector, there has been no fully-formed exploration yet into how these opportunities can develop the new, more innovative and open approaches to the production, interpretation, discussion and accumulation of knowledge about art and art institutions that circulate in artistic, museological, curatorial and cultural theory circles.
Section 2 of this paper attempts to map out both the contextualising "digital landscape" and draw out some lessons and indicators relevant to the Tate. In section 3, the internal resources of the Tate are surveyed: areas needing attention and areas of potential development are highlighted. Section 4 provides a succinct summary of conclusions and lists recommendations. Appendix 1 outlines first ideas for some potential, short-term, "pilot projects" that would test, inform and develop expertise, understanding and wide engagement with digital media for the Tate and its staff.
With no off-the-shelf solutions, or even replicable good practices, progress must be slow and incremental, but flexible and responsive. As the title and brief for this study suggests: the most fruitful approach to these fluid and changing circumstances is to develop a long-term vision, while locating and developing opportunities, building up a knowledge base and experimenting in practice. The managerial and technical challenge is to put in place the best possible conditions to both respond to and shape unpredictable developments.
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