Hopes/Dreams/Fears

The @Platea art collective is once again presenting a public art project that all are invited to participate, from all places across the world. The new project is titled "Hopes/Dreams/Fears", in which participants contribute their sentiments in the form of status updates, to be broadcasted on physical sites as well as social media networks. 

The purpose of H/D/F is to heighten our sense of "ambient awareness", such as the times when we read about our acquaintances' facebook updates and learning about their personalities, lifestyles and habits at the same time. We notice them as insignificant noise in our daily lives, yet it makes a difference as to how we perceive others. By gathering hundreds or even thousands of hopes, dreams, and fears from people across the globe, @Platea hopes to unite strangers and disparate communities, to paint a picture of our colourful world of diversity, and to push for our understanding about people who are different from ourselves. By collecting thoughts on both paper and over the internet, the project hopes to cross the digital divide and bring viewers together regardless of whether they are connected to online social networks or not.

The project was officially launched on June 12th at FIGMENT NYC, an annual participatory art and culture festival on Governors Island in New York. It runs until the end of July, and it is fairly simple to get involved:

1. Fill out the form at http://tinyurl.com/kj75lc

2. Join the hopes/dreams/fears Facebook group at http://tr.im/n6KP

3. Wait to see yours and others' hopes, dreams and fears broadcast over the next month and a half in your Facebook feed.

To learn more about @Platea and hopes/dreams/fears, you can check out their website on http://plateastweets.blogspot.com/

Hope to see you there!

Matt Held: Painting Faces on Facebook

Here's possibly one of my favorite rags-to-riches story (well, fame definitely if not riches for the moment): Once there was an almost unknown Brooklyn artist having a painter's block, struggling for inspiration at his in-house studio with two children running around (one crawling to be more precise), then all of a sudden he got his "A-ha!" moment as he painted his wife's new Facebook portrait. He started making more of such portraits, starting with his friends - the project then takes off and becomes an internet phenomenon. He received coverage from publications such as New York Magazine, Juxtapoz, and of course, numerous bloggers - the media attention goes even as far as across the continent in countries such as Germany and Italy. He was also recently invited to a talk for the 1stfans member community at the Brooklyn Museum and now preparing for an exhibition at a gallery in New Haven, CT in May, along with many other exciting things to come.

Matt Held has a group on Facebook, by the name of "I'll have my portrait painted by Matt Held." For the members who joined the group and added him as a Facebook friend, he would look through their profiles and select the interesting ones (and yes, it is as subjective as it sounds) to paint as portraits. There are some rules however: the picture must be in color, no pets and no children. Small props and quirkiness would help. His goal was to paint 200 pieces, and now the group has close to 4,000 members - the odds are 1 in 20, not too bad for now, is it? Once a portrait gets painted, the sitter (facebooker rather) would get a free JPEG for the finished work and priority in purchasing the portrait.

It is interesting to see that there is an increasing amount of artists that begin to utilise social network and the whole networking phenomenon as their media platform and inspiration. In Matt's case, he brings in the age-old idea of portraiture and re-appropriate it to the modern world of Facebook. The project itself, is perhaps best explained by the artist's own statement:

With the development of social networking sites, I've developed an interest in how people take simple or complex snapshots of themselves, post them to their page as a representation of who they are and what they want people to see. It is an interesting form of control and, in a way, self-preservation. However, there is a strong likelihood that many people who don't know you will see this photo representation and make passing judgments as to who you may or may not be, much in the same way we make passing judgments on people we see in our neighborhoods every day.

Take a collection of these portraits and put them into the context of a gallery space or like setting, and you see a community of individuals - their likeness elevated and memorialized like the original commissioners of portrait painting; the rich and powerful – displayed as a portrait's original intent: expression of an individuals' character and moral quality.

The Ars Electronica archive

Starting in 1979, Ars Electronica GmbH has organized an annual festival featuring digital media art. With close to 30 years of material in digital art and media culture, its archive presents an interesting evolution of digital technology and changes in the creative process. Besides project descriptions of displays over the past festivals, the archive also contains festival documentations and catalogues, information about winners of the Prix Ars Electronica and about the participants for the festival's various projects. What's more interesting is that the website has created an interactive navigator that helps visitors browse through the archives without the need to constantly refer to its main page. Its wealth of creative ideas and their use of technology definitely warrants a look for those who take an interest in digital art.

Update: Serena provided a link for an interactive map navigator for the Ars Electronica archive at http://residence.aec.at/didi/FLweb/ - neat stuff!

The First Post of 2009!!

In celebrating the 101st post of the TEC-CH blog, as well as the first post of the year 2009, I decided to write an entry that involves the magical and wonderful number of 1, that signifies excellence and brand new beginnings. Here are my recent interesting finds that contain the number 1:

• 1stfans at the Brooklyn Museum: Known for its originality, the Brooklyn Museum is offering a new "socially networked" membership that connects its members via online access, where they can socialize with each other during monthly exclusive events, as well as on its Twitter Art Feed. The museum also invites artists to post on the feed at a regular basis, using Twitter as art medium. For the month of January, An Xiao is featured on the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed. A direct quote from her artist statement says, "Through tweeting Morse code, I aim to explore instant communication’s new direction by recalling its history. Rather than important issues, I will communicate daily minutiae, such as “Brushing my teeth” and “Tired. Need coffee.” Such usage of telegraph technology would have been inconceivable in its heyday. In so doing, I want to encourage 1stfans viewers to examine the evolution of instant communication and what purpose, exactly, is served by sharing such minor details of one’s life." (A big thank-you goes to Shelley for showing me the website!)

• One word: The idea is simple - the website features one new word a day, and you have 60 seconds to write about it. After submitting your piece, you can also see what others wrote about the same word. It is both an exhilarating mental exercise and an interesting take on demonstrating multiple perspectives. Its simplicity would also be highly applicable to museum activities, as the word range may be narrowed into one that is related to certain exhibition topics, the activity does not require much time to participate, and the end result is that visitors/users may see the various perceptions of a certain concept, without the interference of a curator. 

• One Laptop Per Child (OLPC): The project has generated so much buzz that probably some readers have already heard of it, but for the sake of good causes I think it deserves yet another mention here. With the creation of the so-called "XO Laptop", the OLPC project aims to provide one connected laptop every child in developing countries, consequently giving them the opportunity to learn via computer use and network access. Find out about various ways to get involved on the OLPC website. With the museum's social responsibility of enhancing learning in mind, how can we contribute to initiatives as such? When I was in Bern and in Warsaw, more than once have I seen the XO Laptop featured in exhibition displays, helping the project to become known to the world. The focuses, however, were on the intriguing designs of this low-cost laptop rather than that of its missions. Perhaps a collaboration in educational programming development is in order? If you have an idea, leave it in the comment box!

Photo20simo

Despite the first snowstorm of this season, five members of TEC-CH braved the weather last Friday to visit the Museo d'Arte of the City of Lugano, in order to see the Photo20simo (pronounced: fo-to-ven-TAY-si-mo) : maestri della fotografia del XX secolo exhibition. With over 300 photographs from the private collection of Torino's Marco Antonetto, the exhibition is a comprehensive look at the various concepts and genres that inspired masterpieces from artists such as Lucien Clergue, László Moholy-Nagy, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, and many more.

In eight different themes: Abstraction, Portraiture, Art and Artists, Body, Landscape, Reportage, Still Life, and Fashion, the exhibition introduced a variety of ideas with archetypal examples that are signficant over the history of 20th-century. From Moholy-Nagy's photograms in the 1920s to the controversial Mapplethorpe nudes in the 1980s, further to latest photographic works by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, the exhibition leads its visitors to a world of immortalised memories, fantastic techniques and innovation.

One warning, however: with a traditional white-cube gallery approach, the exhibition assumes previous knowledge in art history or history of photography. If possible, a pre-arranged guided tour is highly recommended. Our wonderful and knowledgeable docent, Tiziana, introduced us to unspoken stories and deep meanings of these masterworks that are otherwise unknown to visitors.