the useful arts organisation

the useful arts style, design, program, build, manage & find solutions for media, internet, installations, exhibitions, performances and people.

the useful arts (also called technics) are concerned with the skills and methods of practical subjects such as manufacture and craftsmanship. It has now gone out of fashion, but was coined in Victorian times as a mirror of the performing arts and the fine arts.

the useful arts was founded by Dorian Fraser Moore in 2008 to gather together his portfolio and provide a framework for his expanding practise. Angie Fraser Moore is co-director of the company, providing consultancy and advisory services.

Aleksandra Mir, www.aleksandramir.info,2013

Website design & build with Content Management System.

Aleksandra Mir commisioned The Useful Arts to help take her old, self built, flat HTML website which had long been managed by her assistant, and create something that was consistent, clean and thoroughly interlinked that she could manage herself. The resultant website provides comprehensive documentation of 19 years of her work.

the wire, www.thewire.co.uk, 2012

Website Development with CMS and E-Commerce.

The Useful Arts were commisioned to help The Wire take their existing website, along with 7 years of data posted into their previous CMS, and upgrade it to a new, more dynamic, format. The new site gives them more control over how content is featued and interlinked, improves the quality of their content management system, and provides an overhauled shop system. The new site serves as a starting point for the future development of The Wire's online development, allowing them to update and adapt more quickly.

Graphic Design by Ben Weaver

slade school of fine art, www.ucl.ac.uk/slade, 2012

Website styling, design, front end build & integration with UCL systems.

The Useful Arts were initially commisioned to help guide the architecture and implementation of the Slade website to bring the look and feel, and content, up to date, working on top of a CMS, and to better integrate with UCL branding and services. After an an initial discovery and consultation period we were also asked to create the website design working to create a 'riff' on the UCL branding, complementing it whilst also playing with the core ideals and general implementation.

The site build involved integrating with UCL's CMS of choice, Silva, as well as creating an extra media database and integration into services provided across UCL, such as IRIS - UCL's Institutional Research Information System - to create rich staff profiles. Additional components for the site were developed using the Kohana PHP framework.

the floating cinema, www.floatingcinema.info, 2011

Website styling, design and build with content management system.

The Floating Cinema was commissioned by UP Projects as part of their Portavilion series of mobile public event spaces. For the 2011 Portavilion somewhere and Studio Weave decided to create a cinema on a converted barge that would roam the waterways of East London, including areas around the new Olympic Development.

somewhere wanted a website to better reflect what they were trying to achieve than the existing portavilion website, that would offer them a space to document their process as well as the events, and give them a space to post films of the events thereafter. From this I developed the idea of orientating the site around a map of the waterways involved, styling it to give visual emphasis to this oft overlooked back bone of London's past. This also created a spatial snapshot of events and where the influences for the project come from. Blog posts come via mobile phone allowing the embedded GPS data to used to attach the images to the map.

Over the course of the project an additional record of the events will be created, turning the site from a promotional tool and booking mechanism into a full archive of the events.

office for contemporary arts norway, www.oca.no, 2011.

Website styling, design & build with Content Management System.

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway was founded by the Norwegian government with the aim of promoting visual arts and production in Norway to an international audience, and to stimulate international exchange in the arts.

I was commissioned to help OCA transition from a flat file, hand maintained website to something 'more modern' which better reflected the scope of their work, whilst reflecting their established, restrained, aesthetic, and help to improve their publishing workflow.

My aim in the redesign of OCA.no was: to improve the ability for the various audience demographics to find the information they are looking for; to provide a framework for richer documentation of their projects; to better emphasise the wide range of international connections OCA has and is developing; to provide an improved channel for communicating their multiple activities.

The OCA.no website is part publishing platform, part database, the goal of which is to link together the various practitioners and organisations OCA work with with how they work with them, to present a transparent picture of OCAs activities at all levels. As new relationships are established, and new documentation is created, the site will unfold into it's full potential creating an evolving document of OCAs field of influence.

Recent, and not so recent, work, 23rd March 2012.

Earlier this week I put live a new website for Jaywick Escapes, a film by long time collaborators somewhere.

In doing so I realised I've been really busy for the last year, but seemingly have nothing to show. I've been working on a few bigger projects which will be launching shortly, and have been all consuming. Along the way I've been doing lots of updates to existing client sites, and I've manged to fit in some small new projects as well.

First of all I've failed to mention the Floating Cinema website in my news, even though it's lurking in my portfolio, which though now past will be making a return later this year. Since then I've also produced an updated version of Colchester Inn for Public Works was created, complete with an in exhbition interactive for the Knick Knack Cloud component that allowed people to hear stories by swiping the knick knacks over and RFID reader; a portfolio site for film editor Adam Mufti; a portfolio site for artist Rebecca Rendell; done an exchange of services produce a promotional website for my friendly heating engineers, A1 Boilers, who saved me from a cold winter two years in a row; created a petition website to help Aleksandra Mir put Freddie on the Plinth; and finally, created a music download site for experimental musicians Squares and Triangles.

Amongst all that production work I've been working with Cornerhouse and Grizedale Arts on getting them up and running with a live HD Video streaming setup as a part of the Arts Council's 'Broadcast Project' research initiative into how arts organisations can use high end video equipment to broaden their audience reach. And working on these other big projects, and a couple of others that didn't quite make it ... yet.

So not had much time to keep this website updated.

New Website for OCA, 24th May 2011.

I've just launched a new website for The Office for Contemporary Arts Norway, you can see it at oca.no.

Portland Works, 20th January 2011.

Early in December 2010 - just before I went on paternity leave - we launched a new website for Portland Works, an integrated metal works in Sheffield which is fighting for it's survival as a space for craftspeople, artists and small business to thrive. The tenants of Portland Works are attempting to raise funds to buy the building, run it as a co-operative, and restore it to it's former glory, whilst keeping it as a working building. We are happy to have been commissioned by Sheffield University to build this website to try and keep local crafts alive and developing.

What I've been up to, 19th July 2010.

It's been a busy year, but I haven't really said much about what I've been up to. As ever I am working on multiple projects in parallel, all of which seem destined to be launch later on this year. I've also been doing a lot of website maintenance on existing projects.

Things I've done of late that haven't been announced on here are the website for the Rhyzom network, a refresh of somewhere's website, a number of updates to the what will the harvest be website for the new growing season, a re-freshing of the layouts on my personal website and an update to Rossi & Rossi's website to represent their classical artworks, and the first phase of the Lawson Park Electronic Library, created with Guestroom for Grizedale Art's Lawson Park residency space.

I've also been setting up some new servers and migrating sites and email to new places, and carrying out a large number of updates to my CMS framework.

Currently in progress is work on:

Afterall - updating it to represent their advertisers better, to apply more functionality to their article layouts, and to hook into the subscription system provided by University of Chicago.
Spatial Agency - refinements of the database, and working on the mapping of connections between the various practices.
Grizedale Arts - extending the documentation of their contributors and works, and creating a visualisation of how their activities interconnect.
Lawson Park - building the backbone of a small social network to help residents at the space to document their activities whilst staying there.
International Village Shop - A web representation of the various experiments and models of shop commerce carried out by a range of groups I collaborate with; public Works, somewhere, Grizedale arts and Myvillages.org
Colchester Inn - Extending public works website representing the various strands of action for the current phase of this project.

I've also recently been commissioned to work on a number of new projects:

Portland Works - A website to represent a historical Sheffield building and the makers who work there, and to help them in their aim of buying the building and preserving the space.
Office for Contemporary Art Norway - Redevelopment of their website to freshen it up and make the content more accessible
Florian - website for Austrian Jewellery designer and maker
Agri-Cultur - A new website representing various art projects that are connected to agri-culture and farming.

So, keeping busy. Hence why so quiet with the updates!

Rossi & Rossi Gallery Website, 22nd February 2010.

I've recently completed a new website for Rossi & Rossi, a London gallery who specialise in Contemporary and Classical Asian artists and artworks, from traditional Sculptures, Thangkas and Masks through to contemporary originals, prints and photographs from leading artists.

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