Episode 050 - Adam Stoneman (Muse-Tech Ireland) on the implications for the cultural sector of emerging technologies and the need for robust critical engagement with the opportunities and challenges these technologies pose

A conversation with Adam Stoneman, founder of Ireland's Muse-Tech Working Group.

Adam's career is a testament to the possibilities that can arise when cultural institutions embrace technology to democratise and enhance the museum experience.

Last year the Muse-Tech Working Group, a cohort of Irish museum professionals, published Museum Technology: A Critical Primer.

This document engaged with the implications for the cultural sector of emerging technologies such as biometrics, web3, and XR. Through dialogue with civil rights experts and academics, they produced the critical primer to try and start sector-wide conversations to ensure technology serves the cultural sector authentically and ethically.

We explored topics including digital literacy, power imbalances and skepticism towards tech corporations, and the push for open-source initiatives.

You can download the Primer document for free here.

You can now buy Catchup Passes to watch recordings from the first Digital Works Conference. Passes cost £75 and are available until 9th August 2024: thedigital.works

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hello and welcome to the Digital Works podcast, a podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector. My name's Ash and today's episode is episode 50. For our 50th episode, we have a conversation with Adam Stoneman. Adam is the founder of the Musetech Working Group in Ireland and I wanted to speak to Adam about a document that the Working Group published last year titled Museum Technology a Critical Primer, and published by the Irish Museums Association. This document was intended to, as they say in the introduction to the primer, interrogate the popular conception of technology as a neutral tool. The primer covers a number of emerging areas of technology, including algorithms and AI, biometrics, xr and the metaverse, streaming platforms, gamification, blockchains and digitization. It was really interesting to hear about Adam's career, the background to the Primer and how he and the working group hope it is used by the museum sector and beyond. Enjoy, hi, adam. Thanks for joining me.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Thanks for having me, Ash. Before we get started and start talking about this museum technology critical primer that you and your colleagues have put together, let's talk a bit about your background, your career. What does the Adam Stoneman story look like?

Speaker 2: 2:08

Well, I studied art history. That's, I guess, my background academically. After that I found there wasn't many jobs for art historians, so ended up teaching different kinds of teaching TEFL teaching, tutoring kids who had been kicked out of school in East London. After that, I think, I was doing a lot of tutoring around GCSE and found it quite limiting and looked at more freedom that you have, I suppose, in terms of informal education.

Speaker 2: 2:41

So from that background I started working at the Science Museum in Kensington in London and I really enjoyed the sort of the freedom that you have as an educator in museums and in cultural organizations. That setting of informal education is much broader, I suppose. Probably my the career highlight at the Science Museum was when I had to play Hedgy the Hedgehog, which involved me dressing up as a hedgehog and teaching five-year-olds about light sources. So that was a real highlight of my career so far, I would say. From the Science Museum I moved over to Ireland and I started working at the hunt museum, which is a museum in limerick, and then the pandemic hit and the director of the hunt museum, jill cousins. She founded europeana, which is obviously the huge digital platform for european digital heritage, and so the Home Museum were quite interesting and, I'd say, progressive in terms of their approach to digitization, doing some really interesting things with their 3D digitization of their collection. So when the pandemic hit, I, like lots of other people in the cultural sector, was sort of thrown into this digital mode, but quite encouraged by Jill Cousins at the Hunt Museum to really experiment and see what worked 3D virtual space and so a kind of group of 30 school children would land in this virtual room I'd created with 3D models from the museum's collection and we would sort of move through this space and talk and developed some activities Out of that. I think it was a learning point for me that I had tried to initially map on my museum education in the physical world, just completely one-to-one map it onto this virtual space. And I remember having a conversation with a colleague who was much more advanced in their thinking around the digital and they just said you don't have to recreate what you're doing in a physical museum in this virtual space. Think about the particular affordances of the digital medium and lean into those. And so after that, rather than me trying to kind of lead, if you like, a group of 30 avatars around a virtual museum, you can imagine how chaotic that would be virtual museum. You can imagine how chaotic that would be. What I subsequently developed, which was much more successful, was actually allowing total free reign so that the group explored on their own this virtual space and I was there kind of in the background. But it was a different, dynamic and much more successful one in that space, in that virtual. So I suppose that was the first moment that really I began to think or practice digital forms of engagement in the museum, coming from a museum education background From the Hunt Museum, I then started working at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, imma, in Dublin, and I was working on a really interesting European research project there called SPICE, which was about developing forms of citizen curation through technology.

Speaker 2: 6:16

So we were working with Open University in Milton Keynes to use a web app technology fundamentally to allow groups, particularly underserved groups, to select and interpret works of art from the museum's collection digitally and to rearrange them and curate them, essentially to tell a story or to share a perspective that they wanted to share. And it was a really interesting process working on that project for a couple of years, because I think what I learned from that was that digital technology could really open up the museum in a democratic way fundamentally. But I think it also underlined for me that you can't step out of the equation as a facilitator, as an educator. There is that role that being in a museum space or a cultural space together with other people and talking and you know that was really important too in terms of particularly bringing groups that aren't coming to the museum for whatever reason to sort of be there as part of that process, was really important. So I mean that takes us to the primer, I suppose.

Speaker 1: 7:30

There's so much there that we'll talk about the primer first and then we'll talk about some of the things that you touched on there, because I think there's this really interesting and important concept of how digital experience can unlock a more democratic sort of co-creation mode, can unlock a more democratic sort of co-creation mode, but that, as you say, you have to approach those scenarios very differently to how you would in person. I think there's some really interesting or a really interesting example. You know you mentioned Jill Cousins' leadership and I think that point around leadership buy-in to enable this sort of experimentation that you described is equally important. So we'll talk about all of that in a moment.

Speaker 1: 8:09

But museum technology, a critical primer, a lime green document that was sent to me by someone who works at the Goethe Institute who said have you seen this, Ash? I think this is a really great digest for leaders, for non-digital colleagues, to quite quickly get up to speed with emergent areas of potential digital opportunity and also a really good sort of plain language way of explaining some of the considerations that comes with biometrics or digitization or whatever the particular area of technology might be. And clearly a lot of work has gone into producing this document and I'll put a link to the document in the notes for this episode. It was clearly a big group effort, but how did even the idea about producing this first come about? You know, it's, from my perspective, clearly a very practical, useful thing, but who produced it? Why did it get produced?

Speaker 2: 9:16

you know how did it get produced I was working at the irish museum of modern art on this european research project spice about developing technologies to sort of open up the museum collection. And on this project, as I say I'm not from a digital or technology background, I found myself struggling a little bit, working with colleagues from computer science departments in European universities, working with colleagues from tech companies across Europe. A lot of the time I felt myself not able to keep up with some of the conversations that were getting quite technical. But more than that, I also began to feel I had some hesitation about some of the propositions that were coming up, not just in the project but in that wider space, I suppose, of technological research and museums. So what I mean is to give you an example there was a lot of talk, as I say, in that sort of space, around emotions and art an area of research, I suppose and emotions. We were asked in the museum to create an experiment where visitors would map on emojis to represent their emotional response to artworks.

Speaker 1: 10:30

Now, on one level.

Speaker 2: 10:31

That's benign and interesting research, but I think there is some questions you could ask about the limitations of that framing for modern and contemporary art. You know, is it perhaps very limiting to kind of be thinking about emojis as a way of expressing how you feel about an artwork or how you respond to an artwork, but I thought I didn't really have the language to articulate my unease fundamentally through that. I also came across an experiment at a municipal museum in Italy which installed a series of cameras next to paintings in their collection and these cameras would view the response of visitors to the artworks and the idea is that the museum, through biometric technology, essentially in these cameras, could gain an insight into how people were responding to the artworks. Now, on the surface you might think, oh yeah that's an interesting research experiment.

Speaker 2: 11:25

But I think something struck me as hang on a minute, you know there's actually some problems with this approach that there's something quite invasive about having a camera pointing in your face when you're looking at an artwork. There's something that almost feels like it's getting in between your relationship with the artwork in front of you. Digging into that a bit, I actually found out that the whole area of affect recognition is highly debated and there's lots of different views on it and in fact the sort of theory of motion recognition goes back to kind of anthropology and it's highly problematic. In fact, as I found out more, I found that the scientific basis is also highly debated. You know, when I started talking to colleagues about this experiment, other kind of questions came up about whether you know if this technology was recording your age or gender or other characteristics. It could be really problematic in terms of that data collection and an infringement of your privacy. But I described this experiment to you. But the interesting thing for me is it didn't seem to be discussed. It was a news story that I think was on the Telegraph and then disappeared and I thought well, that's strange. You know, this seems like a really interesting experiment to really properly critically discuss as a sector. You know, let's have an argument about it, let's have a discussion about it.

Speaker 2: 12:53

And I then began to feel that there weren't enough spaces for me to explore these kinds of critical questions about technology. Technology it's great that you're doing this podcast and I also felt in some ways that I was sort of reading a lot on my own but not having a space to discuss with other colleagues. So out of that process and a need or a desire to sort of, I suppose, upskill myself in the, in the vocabulary of technology and to try to increase my digital literacy and at the same time to sort of have a space in which I could think critically about technology and its social implications and its ethical implications and its environmental implications, out of that came the idea to create a sort of working group from colleagues in the museum sector and that sort of collegiate space. A sort of working group from colleagues in the museum sector and that sort of collegiate space, a sort of flat space, if you like, of colleagues in the sector was assisted by the Irish Museums Association who helped to put a call out and really helped to kind of form a group. There were 15 of us in the end and it was fairly representative, deliberately so, so that we had people from the National Museum of Ireland, national collections like IMMA, but also local authority museums and also a small military museum. So, representative in terms of it was a focus on museums and I think there is a potential to think about these kind of working group models that extend beyond the museum into other cultural organizations. But for this particular one, it was quite focused on museums, but quite representative also in terms of the regions and in terms of the representatives where they worked within the museum, representatives where they worked within the museum. So, for example, I was coming from a museum education background, but there were also colleagues that were working in archives, particularly around digitization, collections, curation.

Speaker 2: 14:55

By and large, none of us came with a huge amount of digital knowledge there was a head of digital at the National Museum of Ireland who joined us but by and large, we had a desire or a curiosity to, I suppose, increase our knowledge and discuss and debate these ideas. Over the course of nine months we met online. We were situated in every corner of Ireland, we met online and we took these different technology areas, as you mentioned before. So biometrics, xr, bitcoin, etc. And within these sort of technology areas, we would put together a number of key texts and readings, and we were also joined by outside experts from civil society. So groups like Access Now really interesting digital rights organization and also academics and the idea that they were kind of more or less coming outside of the museum sector, certainly, and sometimes even outside of the cultural sector, and that was to try and push our understanding a bit, push us out of our comfort zone to think about what concerns are there, for example, around biometrics, you know, in the space of civil liberties, and how do those concerns relate to our practice specifically within the cultural sector? And so, after nine months of these really enriching discussions where we would sort of, I suppose, first again a better understanding for ourself you know what are we talking about here to then move into these implications for the cultural sector.

Speaker 2: 16:34

So what does this mean in terms of our daily practice in the present? You know, because actually, as I'm sure you know, lots of your listeners would know, sometimes these like algorithms, for example. If you, if you ask a museum worker, they might say, oh no, we don't do that here, but of course this is part of daily practice of so many museums that may not think of themselves as technological at all, but it's how their security system works, it's how their financial system works, it's how their emails work, it's how their newsletter works. You know, it's how their newsletter works. So I think I suppose making visible the way that technology is already being used in museums and then looking into the future to look at more emerging or newer technologies and think about the future. So it was a really enriching process and at the end of that process we came together as a working group to write up our learnings in the form of a critical primer.

Speaker 2: 17:30

I would say that you can find it online as a PDF and if you can share a link to that, that would be great. But I'd also say we did print it out as a physical hard copy. And the idea again it comes back to this idea of the digital and the analog copy. And the idea again it comes back to this idea of the digital and the analog. You know, we printed it out as a quite small bright yellow copy which slips very handily into a kind of handbag or a pocket, and we were hoping that it would circulate through the cultural sector specifically. We're based in ireland but beyond. Our aim really was to help that first stage of understanding that I described, but then also to begin that second, really interesting stage of starting a kind of critical questioning, starting some interesting discussions about the social implications or the ethical implications, and that, I think, is where it starts getting really, really interesting.

Speaker 1: 18:26

Yeah, and it's really interesting to me that you know. You describe the makeup of the group that you're a part of mostly non-digital folks, you said, which I think is so important. You know someone like me. I'm a digital advocate, have been involved in internet things in one way or another for, you know, almost 30 years, and that's fine. I know about all the stuff, I know how it all works.

Speaker 1: 18:51

But I think, particularly for the cultural sector, in order for these platforms, tools, technologies, to be meaningfully and effectively engaged with, it has to be a sector-wide engagement, because otherwise people are going to be lumped with solutions, experiences that they don't fully understand, weren't fully a part of the discussion that ended up with.

Speaker 1: 19:17

However, it might exist and it will be driven purely by you know, technology, people and for purpose and mission-driven organizations like the ones that we work at and with you know, there being proper multifaceted, nuanced, thoughtful discussions is super, super important. So it's really exciting to me that actually this work comes out of individuals who do not have a digital practice as their specialism, as their primary focus, and I think that really shows in the language and the readability of the document. It's not an academic text. It is very readable, it is concise, it is pragmatic and I think as well your ambition for it to be useful for people who aren't just based in Ireland. I think it does that, and I think it also is not entirely skewed and focused just on museums. I think anyone that works at a cultural organization will get something out of reading this document.

Speaker 2: 20:18

Thanks.

Speaker 2: 20:18

Well, I think one of the benefits of working in this way, as a working group, as a collective, was that not only did it contain a range of different kinds of museums etc, but actually there was a range of different kinds of museums etc.

Speaker 2: 20:30

But actually there was a range of views within that collective, you know, from people who were, you know, really really enthusiastic to more critical and everything in between, and you know bringing different principles into this discussion. So I think that that range of views means that the way we wrote it, we sort of focused on different technology areas. I think you can pick up a hint at some of the debates and discussions we had and hopefully it'll encourage new ones, you know, because there are a range of positions on these things. And, as you say, I think the problem and I've seen it personally, I'm sure many of your listeners have of the technologically minded people within an institution pushing, let's say, a new program for collections or project management or whatever it is, without that sort of buy-in it doesn't work. It just often doesn't work, it doesn't have that buy-in. But if you open up that conversation that people feel they have a stake in, then that's a much healthier process and you talked a bit about what your hopes and sort of ambitions were in producing this.

Speaker 1: 21:37

But now that it's, you know it's been out in the world for a little while. What have the reactions been? You know, what feedback have you had from people that weren't involved in producing it?

Speaker 2: 21:47

so it was interesting at the launch we launched it at IMMA in March 2023. And there was a number of representatives or workers from big tech firms. Of course, there's a number of those based in Dublin now and I was a little bit nervous at the launch. I thought, you know, is this going to be seen as too negative or too critical or, you know, are we going to have a big bust up in the Q&A? But in fact I had some really interesting discussions afterwards, representing the public sector in that sense of where we were coming from, and in a discussion with one of the workers from a big tech firm, they were clear that they were coming from a different perspective. But they picked up copies of the primer and they said you know that it was good to see that they felt that a discussion could now be started, almost that we could talk about things, because we got through that basic basic. We know what we're talking about. So now we can have a sort of discussion as equals. I mean, I would say the interesting question and maybe it's a question for a sort of a second publication or, you know, to delve deeper into these questions is this question of these actors and sort of asymmetry, because I do feel that sometimes that if you're a local authority museum and you're having a discussion about, you know, vr headsets with a really big tech firm, there's a huge imbalance of power there in terms of relations. I think you just have to. You have to be clear and upfront about it. I think that that was interesting to me in the reception to the launch. There seemed to be some openness from big tech. I've also had some responses from academics who are teaching in kind of arts courses but using digital technology. Digital arts practitioners as well have found some ideas in it as well. I think I suppose, if you're a digital artist, it is those bigger questions that this primer points at. I wouldn't say it gets very far in terms of discussing, but it asks some questions that I think you know are really interesting there. I think that it's really just the start. You know it's a very short publication. That was the start of our learning process and I just hope that it can spark other projects like this, other critical inquiries, maybe other collectives or working groups.

Speaker 2: 24:34

The period when we started the project in sort of 2022 and when we launched it, I think there has been a sea change. I don't know if you agree, but I feel there has been a kind of sea change in terms of within the cultural sector and beyond in society more generally. There is a general, I think, more digital literacy around. I think there is generally more critical questioning of technology. You know, if we think that Shoshana Zuboff's book Surveillance Capitalism was like a bestseller and lots of those ideas I think have gone into the mainstream, and then that documentary Social Dilemma was huge on Netflix which was all about, you know, some of the negative aspects of social media platforms. So I think that there is a sort of underlying cultural shift which is what we were interested in ourselves. But I think people have become more critical because of the general shift towards that.

Speaker 1: 25:25

More broadly, I'd agree with you that certainly I think the pandemic across almost all demographic groups accelerated digital familiarity because suddenly it was the channel through which you had to do everything.

Speaker 1: 25:41

You didn't really have a choice about it, which I think was unhelpful in many ways, but also helpful in terms of raising people's understanding of how lots of those tools worked, of raising people's understanding of how lots of those tools worked.

Speaker 1: 25:54

And I also agree that there does seem to be a greater awareness that maybe the technology giants are not out for everyone's best interests, and I think that power imbalance is sort of the unspoken dynamic in all of this stuff. You know we're ultimately making choices between technology options that are developed by a handful of very, very well-funded private companies, mostly based in one city in America, and that is informing the tone and focus of the entire digital ecosystem. And I think that's an interesting reality that the cultural sector in particular is grappling with in various ways. And I think it's interesting in the primer that you know I wouldn't say it's not like anti-technology, I think it's pragmatic about where the absolutely undeniable issues are, but overall it seems optimistic that some of these tools could be useful in helping cultural organisations reach and engage with audiences in new and different ways. Would you say that's sort of a fair reading of the tone.

Speaker 2: 27:02

Yes, I think that's right. It was important that this isn't museum technology a primer. It's museum technology a critical primer primer. It's museum technology a critical primer. And you're right, there is a balance there, you know, between if we ended up with a document that said, you know, burn all technology, salt the earth, then you know it's not going to get very far or be very useful.

Speaker 2: 27:28

I think the point of that word critical was that when you're thinking about something critically, then you know it's not just an act of negation, is it? It's about actually trying to push outside of your assumptions, perhaps, and think about the issue, or the technology in this case, in a wider way and maybe think about alternative uses and kind of. I think, think, for me there is sometimes a way, as you really diplomatically described, ash, the perhaps unhealthy monopolization that we see in the technology sector can create these sort of monolithic narratives. One example is the metaverse, when it kind of was launched by one company and it seemed very much actually one personal project, and I think that that sort of inevitable narrative of this is the metaverse. And this is you know, if you're critically thinking about that, you can open it up and you might think well, actually maybe it's not so inevitable as it turned out. I think most people would agree not to have panned out exactly how Zuckerberg planned. So I think the interesting question about being critical about technology is what comes next? You know what do you change after it?

Speaker 2: 28:39

So we had really interesting discussions. Yes, there was critique of coded bias, of questions of exclusion, questions of secondary impact, let's say, of certain algorithms that you know, normalization of practices that could have harmful effects in other areas. However, alongside those critique, as you say, there was also these moments of opening up. You know what do we actually want? And so issues actually of open sourcing, issues of saying, well, we want to be able to share our digital culture and digital heritage as widely as possible. We want people to have access.

Speaker 2: 29:22

Another really positive thing that came out of our discussions was about sharing resources and saying do we all need to have, you know, expensive digitization equipment or can we actually share it in a more collaborative way? So, yeah, as you say, that hopefully balances some of the critique, to say that we can look at maybe different ways of doing things. And I think, fundamentally for me I think the subtitle of this podcast is digital stuff in the cultural sector. I think the subtitle of this podcast is digital stuff in the cultural sector, but I think you can also flip that round right and you can say well, what kind of cultural values do we need to see in the digital sector? You know, what kind of values can people in the cultural sector, in the humanities more broadly, bring to the digital technology and the digital sector?

Speaker 1: 30:10

And I think you hit on the most important word there really, which is critical, you know, and being thoughtful. Because when that is a key principle of your approach, you can then become aware of and perhaps mitigate some of the more negative elements of some of the technology choices. And I think also it highlights that, as you said earlier, when technology is the starting point, it can often lead to almost unquestioning adoption because we're excited about the technology, we're going to use this technology, whereas actually, if outcome and a sort of critical eye and a critical questioning approach is taken, you know what is the best way to achieve this outcome, what are our options, what are the upsides and downsides of these choices, you are going to end up with probably much more effective choices being made. But also, as you said, it then becomes a conversation that other non-technical, non-digital colleagues can meaningfully engage with, because you're opening it up and it isn't just a technical conversation. That feels like a really important point yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 31:23

I mean just to add gracie may bradley, who was then the director of liberty civil rights organization in the uk. In her contribution to one of our talks she asked these questions. She suggested that museums ask themselves these questions and this this is in the introduction to the primary. What is this technology for? Is the aim legitimate? Can you achieve your aim another way? What else could this money be spent on? What are the consequences if the technology doesn't work?

Speaker 2: 31:53

And I suppose with those questions you might think, god, that's very, you know, that's putting up barriers. But I think that once, if you satisfy those questions, you are raising the bar. Yes, you are raising the bar, but when you satisfy those questions, then you're really using technology as, as you say, into its fullest potential. And that's where it's really really interesting, because we've all been to museums where there's, you know, a kind of gamified sort of activity that falls a little bit flat and you think, god, they didn't really think this through or you know, it's been rushed. And I think if you raise the bar higher, then actually the results, as you say, will be far more satisfactory and far more beneficial and and will really deliver and so, as I said, I will put a link to the primer.

Speaker 1: 32:37

I would really encourage anyone, particularly those digital practitioners working in the sector, to have a read, but also share it with your colleagues. It's, I think, probably a good conversation starter. But I want to, maybe just for the last part of our conversation, go back to where we started. You know, you said you are a museum educator and you do not have a particularly digital background. And yet a particularly digital background, and yet in the pandemic, through the pandemic and maybe still, you are using some digital approaches to engage with participants, engage with groups. I'm interested in hearing a bit more about that. What do you see the opportunities being at that intersection of, I suppose, informal education, as you termed it, and digital?

Speaker 2: 33:24

Yeah, I think it's an interesting question because in the pandemic, as you say, there was no time to reflect, we just had to launch into it, and I think that was part of the process of that working group was actually forging a space, and it can be really difficult, we're all working far too many hours, etc. But to really protect the space for that reflection and I think, after I've had time for that reflection on, I suppose, digital engagement, I think that what I felt is that you know there are particular affordances, there are particular qualities of digital media. Whatever we're talking about, for example, in that sort of XR space, that can be really really interesting in terms of other ways of learning. So it's not the same as learning if you're physically in a space together. It's a different kind of learning. It's actually much more sort of individual on autonomous form of learning. But it is a form of learning and there are elements that are creative, but in a different way than you see creativity play out if you have 30 kids in a workshop doing an art activity, creative digitally. It's a kind of cut and paste. You know there's a sort of higher energy to it. It's more frenetic almost because you can edit in real time. And these are the affordances of digital media, and I really think you have to lean into that and you have to understand it on its own terms and sort of value it on those terms and then not try to kind of think about it in the same way or treat it in the same way as a sort of physical analog encounter.

Speaker 2: 35:05

The other thing I feel in terms of digital engagement is I do think that separation is important, because I feel that actually sometimes it is really important to really focus on the embodied experience, on the sort of haptic or the tactile. So when we were working on the European digital project at EMA, sometimes we did actually just say let's put all of the phones down and all of the screens away and let's just look at this work of art together really slowly, and let's just sit in a room actually in silence kind of, with a work of art. That may sound strange to some listeners, but you know these moments are rarer and rarer in the way we're increasingly living our lives, with our phones buzzing every two minutes. So I think actually if you can create those spaces in cultural organizations and those sort of spaces for quiet contemplation, then the kind of immersive vr experience that's heightened as well.

Speaker 2: 36:06

You know that if you can kind of separate somehow, so if we're digital all the time, then it flattens and I think you don't appreciate that moment where you go wow, you know I'm in a digital space because you haven't taken your eyes away from your screen all day. But if you, if you actually say, actually let's think about these as separate and let's try to be clear about the demarcation. Let's not encourage maybe people all the time to stick their phones up to artworks, to scan QR codes, you know, for example, but let's try to create sort of these quite separate and distinct spaces where we're really leaning into the qualities of each. So you're leaning into that embodied space of a gallery or a museum or likewise, as I say, you're you're leaning into the qualities of a digital experience and I think that's what's exciting about where we're moving now.

Speaker 1: 36:58

I agree and I think actually the most effective experiences, regardless of whether they're digital or they're in person are where there has been a really thoughtful approach taken to how that experience is designed and what that experience is for.

Speaker 1: 37:14

And I think, as you said just there and earlier, digital experiences work best when you understand what they're good at and less good at and you really lean into the stuff that they're good at and you, you know, you, you shape the experience, so it's not reliant on the things that are less good at, so you're not using digital to try and do a facsimile of an in-person experience or vice versa. And again, I think, requires a critical, thoughtful approach that can never use technology as the starting point. It needs to be about the experience you're trying to create, the thing you're trying to achieve, the impact you're trying to have. I completely agree that. That then, I think, creates a space for us to think differently about our physical spaces, because you're then being very clear about what all these things are for and cumulatively, you're then able to offer a really nuanced diversity of different types of experiences that people can have.

Speaker 2: 38:13

Absolutely, and I think when you were speaking there it made me think about the poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who, who was writing poems in the 19th century in the States and he had this line about technology as an improved means to an unimproved end, and he was talking about trains in the 19th century.

Speaker 2: 38:38

But I do often think about that. Sometimes, actually, technology, I think, think, can just be an improved means to an unimproved ends that actually think, oh, this is actually a gets us there faster. But that second part that I think you're pointing to is actually, you know, what are the focusing on the ends? Maybe there is something that can be transformed fundamentally in terms of where we're going, where we want to arrive at. But I think sort of have to sort of think that through, don't you? And I think hopefully, cultural organizations are doing that critical thinking more in our sort of post-pandemic, where they're really clear about where they want to go, not just using technology for its own sake. But yeah, I think that's a healthier space to be. Yeah, I think that's a healthier space to be.

Speaker 1: 39:21

And sitting here, sort of autumn 2023, how are you feeling about the state of, I suppose, digital change, digital adoption in the sector? Where do you think the biggest opportunities and the biggest challenges lie as we move into 2024 and beyond?

Speaker 2: 39:41

I think there are some positive signs. You know, the last couple of years public policy has really lagged in this area. But in Ireland, where I'm speaking from, I was pleased to see the Arts Council here are launching a digital arts policy. And you know, I think that the space to not just be reactive all the time but for public policy to actually shape, actively shape the development of the digital in the cultural sector, I think that's the opportunity. It can't just be the sense that we're constantly catching up and the narrative is being completely defined and dictated by a small group of very powerful tech companies.

Speaker 2: 40:23

I think that the space is to actually say no, look, this is the direction we want to head in. And that will be challenging as well because, as we were saying, there's a huge power asymmetry there. But I think it is really necessary and allied with that, I would see the opportunity for public digital infrastructure. So, you know, I think we are increasingly becoming wary of relying totally on a few private providers of really important digital infrastructure. So, this question of investing in public platforms for digitization Finland have a really good model of this that I think other European countries and elsewhere can emulate, where their digital cultural heritage is on a free, publicly owned platform that's accessible to educators, to researchers, to cultural organizations, and I think that's a really exciting model to follow.

Speaker 1: 41:23

Well, on that optimistic note, thank you, adam, great thanks.

Speaker 2: 41:27

Ash, it's a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 41:33

And that is everything for today. Thanks for listening. You can find all episodes of the podcast, sign up for the newsletter and find out about our events on our website, thedigitalworks. You can also find us on LinkedIn, now that Twitter is a total garbage fire. Our theme tune is Vienna, beat by Blue Dot Sessions. And, last but not least, thanks to Mark Cotton for his editing support on this episode. See you again soon.