Source Spong

Our art-loving, culture-jamming friends at Sony have been telling us this morning all about an interesting project by the UK’s forward-thinking Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) which has the honourable, though some might say misplaced, intention of getting young people and gamers more interested in the arts.

ICA: The Show is a joint collaboration between the ICA and PlayStation Portable. The first show is downloadable from today at www.yourpsp.com and features a piece on onedotzero, the annual digital creativity festival which SPOnG unashamedly loves, the recent fantasy movie Mirrormask (from, yep you guessed it, Sony pictures) and the band Battles, who, coincidentally, start their European tour next week, following on from their recently released Warp records EP.

Ekow Eshun, the ICA's artistic director, has continued to stress, since he took on the job last year, that all art institutions have to find new and better ways of connecting with new (and, younger) audiences. In the press release announcing The ICA Show, he said: "We wanted to find new ways to connect with people beyond the boundaries of our building. It seemed obvious to me to try and make use of the ways people communicate already."

Eshun, who is also a former editor of Arena magazine and a regular pundit on BBC2's Late Review, continued: "It's taking our values, the values of the ICA and spreading them. I'm a zealot about all of this, we have licence to take lots of risks and reach out," he said.

Minister for Culture, and MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, said that the scheme "could represent a pivotal development for culture in the UK… This is a fantastic example of recognised leaders in the field of arts and technology working together to grow new and diverse audiences for the arts."

Carl Christopher, sponsorship manager at Sony Entertainment UK, said: “As a digital broadcaster, PlayStation Portable's agenda is to programme original, bold and wow! factor content, that communicates in the idiom of our adult target audience.”

SPOnG is always mildly distrustful of people who drop words such as 'communicate in the idiom of' into general conversation. However, as Mr Christopher hopefully just typed these words into a press release then we will let him off on this occasion.

Christopher adds that: “The ICA: The Show commission aims to showcase the contemporary tastemakers in creative arts, develop and maintain new national audiences. The winner is the audience, who will be presented with ‘what to see’ 10 minute magazine size insights of contemporary arts main players in a very appealing format.’

The shows will showcase new work in four segments - features, film, music and design. The second show will look at the film V for Vendetta, based on Alan Moore’s cult comic, feature an interview with the Test Icicles (shit name, good band), profile the animator Rex and run a feature on the violent Brazilian documentary, Favela Rising.

The ICA attracts perhaps far more criticism from the mainstream media than it does praise. Certainly from the more conservative members of the tabloid press (read:The Daily Mail). It is seen by many as an outdated haven of elitist attitudes, dressed up as clever post-modernism, and is often panned for being - that philistine’s favorite - just a plain old waste of tax-payers/Art Council/Lottery money.

Whilst these critiques are often valid (and SPOnG has certainly seen many exhibitions, shows and gigs at the ICA over the years which have been worse than the smelliest bull-poo) the ICA still plays a pivotal role in the UK’s cultural life. For many London-dwellers, whatever they have thought of it at particular times, it has often delivered a successful mix of the mainstream and the experimental aspects of contemporary culture.

And perhaps more importantly, the lovely ICA bar always serves up consistently superb cocktails, opens late throughout the week and there are always tons of fit birds there - always better to help you appreciate real culture. Never, however, use the word 'bird' at the ICA, as it is no longer considered either ironic or cool to be an unreconstructed pre-feminist barbarian. Do, however, feel free to rock a daft Hoxton haircut and discuss with the above-mentioned ladies all manner of exciting future art/technology collaborations and ideas you have which you will most likely have forgetten about as your head pounds with a margarita hangover the next morning.

Speaking of ICA: The Show, one rather cynical SPOnG contributor commented earlier: “This is just misjudged isn’t it? It's Barley-ism gone mad! PSP users aren’t interested in contemporary art, they want free downloadable games or porn.”

Others in the SPOnG office were more open-minded to the idea though, with one resident Nathan Barley adding: “I like the idea of having a monthly or regular video-magazine to tell me all about culture and whatnot… providing it is genuinely good and it’s stuff that I ...