The design of digital museums today prioritizes digital technologies to ensure audiences' access, motivations, and engagement. However, "digital-first" approaches overlook the importance of physical spaces, bodies, and senses in audience engagement. In response, this paper proposes a "physical-first digital museum" approach that foregrounds physical spaces, bodies, and senses. This provides a more humanistic standpoint from museums' and audiences' perspectives from the Global South. Consequently, this paper updates scholarship on digital museums that focuses on trials of new digital technologies in museum experiences, museum audience studies focusing on the affordances of digital technologies for audience - all of which are predominately related to western countries. This study draws on interviews and consultations with museum professionals, online audience analytics, and an audience survey with Vietnamese and international expat museum audiences, including young, family, and international museumgoers, between 2020 and 2021. Findings show audiences desire digital experiences to activate the physical space and their bodies and senses. Audiences feel this can build emotional attachment and retain the value of physical cultural artefacts. Overall, this paper contributes new knowledge by sharing physical-first and audience-focused desires for digital museum practices that position physical space, bodies, and senses as central in digital museums.

The digital labour economy is a system where work is mediated through digital technologies and online platforms. Work is often also called platform labour or gig work. China has brought out new labour protections to promote and support these new forms of employment (NFE) to address gaps in existing labour rights, personal data protection, and AI governance. However, a new type of work in the digital labour economy is creative digital platform work, which is distinct from other kinds of digital work and gig work that only uses AI and digital platforms to receive work, gigs, and tasks. Visual artists’ work is mediated by multiple digital software, AI programs, platforms, and apps. However, they do not have the usual ‘labour relationship’ like gig workers or platform labourers, as they are not employed by any single platform.

Cultural heritage museums globally are currently undergoing rapid digital transformation. However, cultural heritage museums in Vietnam face challenges in systematically and comprehensively digitizing collections because of a lack of technical, financial, and skilled human resources. Currently, museum professionals must carry out digitization projects with a deficiency in technical equipment to properly scan cultural artifacts, a lack of digitally skilled staff, and a slowly developing internet infrastructure. This study draws on a codesigned digitization project between RMIT University, the Vietnamese Women's Museum, and the Vietnamese National Museum of Fine Arts from 2020 to 2023 that included interviews, consultations, and the digitization of twelve museum artifacts. An ethics and sustainability framework was developed and used in this study to ensure the inclusion of (1) local context, (2) local culture, and (3) local stakeholders' voices. The findings highlight a "global digitization divide," where country-specific limitations affect the amount and pace of Vietnamese digital culture that can be produced as well as the quality of experiences when accessing, viewing, and engaging with the digital culture. Consequently, the creation of more complex digital culture, such as immersive augmented reality or virtual reality environments, is currently unfeasible. This highlights the need to investigate Vietnamese museum professionals' capabilities and challenges as they undergo digital transformation and, in response, design an ethical and sustainable framework for museum digitization projects.

This paper explores the nature of artists’ careers over eight years. It investigates artists’ career paths including developments, highlights, challenges, and stasis over eight years. This is a longitudinal study that comprises two sets of interviews conducted with the same fifteen artists in 2013 and 2021. It analyses artists’ reflections on their careers as emerging artists in 2013 and as established artists in 2021. It exposes how these artists’ experience changes and shifts along their career paths, yet, how the one continuity throughout their careers is precarity. Together, this longitudinal study uncovers new knowledge on the nature of artists’ careers by exposing how precarity is experienced over the course of their careers. This also develops existing discourse on precarious work and labour. Together, this expands understandings on ‘precarity’ in the creative industries by showing how it is experienced in artists’ careers as something that is tangible and mental, how it is experienced across their careers, and how strategies are found to cope with this precarious career. Addressing this can shed new light on the nature of artists’ careers and the nature of work in the creative industries today.

This paper explores a paradigm shift in work culture in the contemporary art sector due to digital transition and the introduction of AI. New ways of working with AI and digital software are embedded and normalized in everyday Chinese artistic practices. This work includes new forms of creativity and efficiency, yet, simultaneously includes new types of digital labour. This paper conceptualizes this as "digital art work," which draws attention to the often-overlooked aspects of artists' work, particularly their everyday artistic practices that increasingly include digital software and AI. What is the role and position of the artist in an environment where digital software and AI are becoming more central in artistic creation? How do artists creatively (mis)use AI? What does this paradigm shift in work culture mean for the future of the artist's role and the future of the contemporary art sector? This paper draws on 48 semi-structured interviews with visual artists and arts professionals, including painters, sculptors, mixed-media, and internet artists as well as contemporary art gallery owners, museum project directors, curators, and culture policymakers living and working in China during 2023. The findings show how Chinese artists are mastering AI and opening up new spaces for creativity and how the contemporary art sector in China has already transitioned to a new "digital way" in artistic creation. These findings can help to create policy around AI globally and provide solutions for the sustainability of the artist profession and the future of the contemporary art sector.

This paper investigates the use of Facebook by cultural professionals in Vietnam to maintain connections with their audiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Facebook provided a simple and free way of maintaining connections with audiences at a time of increased pressure to shift and adapt to online work immediately. However, concerns have emerged about the nature of arts-centred endeavours that are at odds with this for-profit platform and the production of digital culture in the Global South via a Western platform. The investigation uses findings from 50 semi-structured interviews with cultural professionals and a digital ethnography of seven art organizations' Facebook posts over two months. It highlights that the Covid-19 pandemic propelled a paradigm shift in how cultural professionals communicated with their audiences via Facebook. These shifts have longer and broader implications for the future of work in the cultural sector, both in Asia and globally.

This paper draws on findings from a systemic review of work published globally on museums ' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and recommendations for future development in the museum sector. This can be used to determine the best practices for museums, including how to create engaging digital content, boost cultural tourism using digital technologies, create new business models, and manage copyright and legal protection of digitized content. It can be used to inform museums across Vietnam and beyond about the best practices internationally for Covid recovery by showing what published studies globally state about future practices to ensure the sustainability of museums. It also outlines an ethics of digitization concerning access to digital technologies and general understandings of the ' correct ' use of digital content. This can be used as a ' roadmap ' for museum professionals and fills a needs gap in Vietnam on digital culture policy, digital skills, and knowledge on how to manage legal and copyright issues with digital content. Overall, this paper can assist the national museum sector navigate a digital transition.

This article explores the embedded and embodied ‘culture of geographic mobility’ across contemporary visual artists’ careers and its impacts on their feelings towards mobility and home. This article uncovers the under-explored aspects about artists’ lifestyles, for whom geographic cross-border mobilities across Europe are a necessity throughout these artists’ careers. In addition to changes in mobility patterns, pace, motives over their careers, there are also changes in their feelings towards mobilities and home across their careers and as they become older (career and age wise). Mobile careers can often start with feelings of freedom and comfort in having mobile homes. However, the effects of having mobile careers long-term can result in feelings of ambivalence, tensions and anguish towards mobility vis-à-vis home. This longitudinal study draws upon two sets of interviews conducted eight years apart with the same fifteen contemporary visual artists from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. They were first interviewed in 2013 at the emerging stage in their career and they were interviewed again in 2021 at the established stage in their career. The nexus between careers, mobility and home helps to expand the ‘mobilities paradigm’, by sharing new knowledge on contemporary visual artists’ mobilities and its effects on feelings of home across their careers.

This paper explores how photogrammetry and free, open-source software can be used to sustainably develop museum sector capacity to digitize and publish Vietnam’s cultural heritage online. This approach was developed and applied during a digitization project as a solution to overcome challenges experienced in Vietnam concerning a lack of human, technical and financial resources. This paper draws on findings from a co-designed action research project between RMIT University Vietnam (RMIT) and the Vietnamese Women’s Museum (VWM) that developed an approach to create 3D (3 Dimensional) digital artifacts of their Betel Nut Collection using free, open-source software and applying the technique of photogrammetry. The aim was to co-design and co-produce a sustainable solution focused on readily available and easy-to-use digital technologies. However, not all artifacts could be digitized using this method, which sheds light on the challenges and opportunities of digitizing cultural heritage in the Global South. Overall, this sustainable approach can be applied by other museums and cultural institutions and can be a way to empower museums in the Global South to digitize and digitally display cultural heritage artifacts.

Abstract This paper draws on findings from a systemic review of work published globally on museums’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and recommendations for future development in the museum sector. This can be used to determine the best practices for museums, including how to create engaging digital content, boost cultural tourism using digital technologies, create new business models, and manage copyright and legal protection of digitized content. It can be used to inform museums across Vietnam and beyond about the best practices internationally for Covid recovery by showing what published studies globally state about future practices to ensure the sustainability of museums. It also outlines an ethics of digitization concerning access to digital technologies and general understandings of the ‘correct’ use of digital content. This can be used as a ‘roadmap’ for museum professionals and fills a needs gap in Vietnam on digital culture policy, digital skills, and knowledge on how to manage legal and copyright issues with digital content. Overall, this paper can assist the national museum sector navigate a digital transition.

Cultural professionals in the art and cultural sector in Hanoi, Vietnam, are carrying out digitization projects and utilizing digital platforms, tools and applications in order to curate their own narrative on Vietnamese art and culture. This can help to counter digital orientalism by redressing the imbalance in the amount of accessible content online as well as control over the production and circulation of cultural content. An increase in the amount of digitized cultural content can help to engage local audiences and introduce a contemporary image of Vietnamese culture to an international audience. Today, Vietnamese cultural professionals are able to decide what to digitize, what to make publicly accessible and how to curate it online. This paper presents findings from a case study on Manzi Art Space, including a digital ethnography of an augmented reality public art project entitled 'Into Thin Air' and 20 interviews with art and cultural professionals working in Hanoi. The findings show how digitization allows cultural professionals to shape the narrative on contemporary Vietnamese art and culture. However, the findings also show there are particular challenges faced by cultural professionals in Hanoi, including lack of human resources, technical resources and funding as well as concerns around copyright law and government permissions. These challenges are hindering the ability to utilize new digital technologies.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has changed the nature and importance of arts communication, exhibition and promotion via social media. However, moving fully online has highlighted global inequalities in digital inclusion and access, with inherent biases towards content from the West and larger cultural institutions with sufficient technical, human and financial resources in order to survive through the Covid-19 Pandemic. This paper investigates how non-profit art spaces in Hanoi, Vietnam, developed their use of Facebook for effective communication, exhibition and promotion of Vietnamese art and culture during the first closure of physical premises. With the shift of all work online due to Covid-19 Pandemic social distancing measures, Facebook provided non-profit art spaces with a viable digital solution at a time of increased pressure to connect with the audience. Facebook provided a way to overcome challenges faced by non-profit art spaces with lack of financial, human and technical resources, by providing a free and widely accessible social media platform. The current study draws upon a digital ethnography of Facebook posts over 2 months and 50 semi-structured interviews with cultural professionals in Hanoi. The findings highlight changes in the use of Facebook, the digital strategies that were created for working fully online, and how art spaces maintained connection with the audience during the closure of physical premises between March and April 2020. This study identifies changes in social media usage patterns in three main ways: 1) the introduction of using Facebook for digital exhibition and holding live events, 2) changes in type of promotional content, and 3) changes in communication style with the introduction of an effective rhetoric of care. Together, the findings highlight changes in the nature and importance of arts communication, exhibition and promotion via social media in the cultural sector due the Covid-19 Pandemic. Developments over this time could help provide a sustainable solution to overcome challenges faced in the cultural sector in Vietnam and overcome global inequalities in access and inclusion online.

The Politics of Migration and Mobility in the Art World - Transnational Baltic Artistic Practices across Europe; Explores the nature of artistic practices for highly mobile artists from the Baltic States, moving regularly across multiple borders across Europe in order to maintain their position on the global art world. Artists with trans-local homes that combine and connect homeland, host country and a unique understanding of home and belonging. 12 b/w illus.