Google Doodles, creative content with huge brand recognition.
The first Remix conference was held in London in 2012, modelling itself as a global summit on the ‘big ideas’ that are shaping the future of culture, technology and entrepreneurship. Two years later the event is being held in Sydney, New York, Hong Kong and United Arab Emirates and next year Tokyo will be added.
The rapid spread of the event is testament to the global reach of its major sponsors, Google, The British Council and Bloomberg; and to the growing global desire for digital connectivity.
Tom Uglow, who is the Sydney-based Creative Director of Google’s creative lab, set the scene with a striking metaphor. ‘Imagine what power was to an 18th century farmer. It was a horse, or the wind; but to us today it is a power switch. It is ubiquitous. It is on demand and all around us. The same thing is happening with information.’
Uglow advocates low-scale experimentation, to develop the potential of this digital revolution. He highlighted some great participative theatre and music performance projects that are doing this, for example, through the YouTube Symphony where musicians were selected via open online auditions and came together to perform as real live symphony orchestras in New York and Sydney! Uglow also spoke of the streamed, real-time performance of Shakespeare, delivered as a mosaic of lines live-streamed on a ‘digital stage’ from participants like you and me performing into our webcams.
He urges us to give new ideas a go; to prototype early; and to fail small. This approach was championed by a number of the best speakers at the event including Allegra Burnette, the Museum of Modern Art New York’s outgoing Digital Development Director, and Hugh Bradlow, Chief Technology Officer at Telstra.
Remix’s 800 strong audience and 100 speakers found a comfortable niche in the post-industrial ambience of Redfern’s vast Carriageworks. The expansive list of partners, whose speakers were liberally spread through the program included (beyond those already named) Vivid, City of Sydney, Destination NSW, and Sydney Opera House. Remix is the idea of UK entrepreneurs and amalgamators, Peter Tullin and Simon Cronshaw. They have published two neat little ebooks on creative entrepreneurship with The Guardian, and founded a successful online gift shop called CultureLabel. The shop draws together some of the most delectable newly-styled objects from the world’s art museum shops. On a simplistic level, Remix is an extension of this concept to a conference format. Delectable ideas are substituted for delectable objects.
The conference dealt solidly with the emerging nature of its subject matter; leaning just far enough over the precipice of the new to grasp how current technology is enabling new modes of commerce, culture and community; but not falling over it into a fantastic or evangelical prophecy.
Tim Duggan, Content Director at Sound Alliance produces online sites for the 18-29 year-old market (prompting nine million page views a month). Titles such as Junkee, FasterLouder, In the Mix and SameSame are respectively mapped around indie culture, music, and young same-sex niche audiences; but are evolving rapidly to include broader and longer format content which includes news, to sustain and expand audiences. Duggan revealed how ‘native advertising’ is operating in this environment; providing stimulating branded content that responds to the issues users are discussing, and is ultimately shared amongst users as they would share the content they generate themselves (a punchy YouTube video that ultimately advertises a product or service is an example).
When commissioning multi-platform arts content, different interactive forms of the same product are being created for TV broadcast, website, app and via social media). Anna Higgs, from Film4 in the UK, discussed establishing dialogue with viewers during the conception and production of film drama projects via a range of platforms. She described an approach that self-consciously seeks to take people on a ‘treasure map journey’, rather than a ‘road atlas journey’.
SkyArts’ Freya Murray reflected on how her most successful projects have preserved the ‘integrity of the creative idea’ while using multi-platform approaches to ‘amplify’ its reach to broader and global audiences.
Format-wise Remix scraped out what felt like a genuine space for dialogue that was informed by, and improved on, the rapid-fire post-TED conference approach. The TED tendency for over-caffeinated zeal and call-to-action was mostly avoided.
The diversity of the audience reflected that of the speakers and represented both aligned and overlapping industries, coming as they did from advertising, digital entrepreneurship, fundraising, digital storytelling and cultural institutions. The breaks in procedure provided a ready loam for new connections, and a chance, for me at least, to prototype some small ideas in conversation.
The ‘cultural influencers’ put their cards and techniques squarely on the table in this Remix conference. Brand Value, fiscal and social, and Brand Presence were recurrent concerns. The Google brand is now valued at $93 billion and The British Council’s at $540million. Nick Marchand, British Council Australia Director, assured us the real value of The British Council brand lay in its social value in encouraging development – cultural, educational and other – through interchange with the UK.
Our news, history and even our personal communications (our big and little ideas) have of course always been sponsored and mediated by society’s cultural influencers, whether they are our grandparents, church, academies, courts, business entrepreneurs or states. And there is nothing essentially new in our drive to be entrepreneurial in how we communicate. So it shouldn’t have come as such an unlikely surprise to me to learn that there exist companies whose sole job it is too create the content to build the brand of the cultural influencers themselves. Charlie Leahy explained how his company, ‘Boom Natives’, has made a business of building a fan base via social media for any particular brand you might choose.
Despite frequent reflections by speakers on the massive importance of Asia for the digital realm, and powerful platform that digital connectivity delivers for non-mainstream cultures, there were few perspectives provided from such cultures at the conference.
One speaker reported that 80% of Australian content posted on Youtube is viewed outside Australia, and 90% of US content is viewed outside the US, as if to demonstrate the immense demand for western digital content in non-western markets. The lack of reciprocity from the West, particularly in its consumption of Asian cultural product reflects a clear need for greater cultural understanding and exchange with Asia.
At this time of responding to the most recent ‘remix’ of the Federal Budget, with its significant cuts to our national broadcasters, the Australia Council for The Arts, and NICTA (Australia’s ICT Research Centre of Excellence) we would be foolish to overlook the content of what we are saying and its impact in Australia and our region. Whilst creativity with remixed communications amongst remixed cultures will open up our options, we might ask, ‘Who will have access to the power switch?’
In the long run it will be who we reach and what is communicated that will determine our planet’s future. The future is certain to be an ‘unlikely’ one, but whether it will be a future where we are in dialogue with the cultural diversity of our region on equal terms, is an open question.
