Pantalla Global, an upcoming exhibit at the CCCB in Barcelona, explores the roles of screens in our lives. And of course a major part of that is the role WE play in generating and sharing all sorts of content. With the exhibit, they’ve created a platform for soliciting and broadcasting content submitted by the public and creative partners. It’s nicely planned, with themes for people to contribute content to, and a complimentary web interface to collect contributions –
History / Sports / Advertising / Excess / Play / Surveillance / Politics

The exhibit recognises that people power / publicly generated content is a major part of our media lives today and this is a smart way to both highlight and exemplify the phenomenon.

It’s ‘incubating’ right now – they’re collecting video submissions (you can do that here). The exhibition will run from 24, January to 27, May 2012.

P.S. The CCCB has a fantastic, addictive bookshop. You were warned…

Once a year, Portland’s Art Museum is temporarily transformed, thanks to a collaboration between the museum and the Art & Social Practice course at Portland State University. Shine a Light becomes a stage for events take place all over the museum – special performances, installations, tours, workshops, and games.

The idea is to get visitors thinking about the way they interact with art. What’s important to point out here is that Art & Social Practice is focused on types of art which engage people in the creation process. So when they are invited to take over a museum for a day, the museum experience becomes re-focused on opening up the possibilities of what can happen in a museum, creating new ways for visitors to consume art and also actively being a part of creating art.

Each intervention provides a format for social exchange, with the orchestrators defining just how much authorship is shared with visitors. What you get are lots of formats for bringing people together – lovely, celebratory, strange, intimate, and inspired – visitors decide to do a little or a lot.

Shine a Light pushes hard against standard museum behaviour protocol. Visitors are typically invited to consume art, not engage to the extent of being co-authors as art happens. Its thrilling to extend that opportunity to the thousands of people walking through the door during these events.

What makes the whole experience feel truly communal is that photographic documentation is encouraged throughout.

This is pushed further by Molly Sherman’s project, The Visitors Exhibition Catalogue, which recruits museum goers to collectively produce the 2011 Shine A Light catalogue over the course of the evening.

Volunteer visitors were given assignments (and nifty reporters booklets!) to document specific events and installations with the responsibility of reporting back and handing in written, drawn or photographic representations. The final publication was produced on the spot in collaboration with the versatile Publication Studio.

So much activity and so much to mention…

Museum Cookbook
Hunting through the museum, pick up art-inspired recipes by popular Portland chefs. What a nice way to mix taste buds and other local talents into the consumption of art. Seen above: Braised Shortribs recipe, inspired by Charrette de Boeuf by Vincent Van Gogh and Apple Crumble Pie Holes recipe by Pie Spot. Organised by Lexa Walsh & Crystal Baxley with Jillian Punska.

Food cART
Taste a few of those recipes prepared by excellent food carts outside. Seen above: Plum, pear, fig and blue cheese fougasse by Tastebud, inspired by Childe Hassam’s Oregon Still Life and malt beer by Captured By Porches Brewing, inspired by Rick Bartow’s Ursa Major. Organised by Lexa Walsh & Crystal Baxley with Jillian Punska.

Museum Visitor
An empty platform with a special label lets guests pose next to Duane Hanson’s uncanny life-like sculpture, “The Dishwasher”. Organised by Molly Sherman.

Wish You Were Here
DIY souvenir – take a photo of yourself next to your favourite work of art in the museum and have it turned into a postcard on the spot. Organised by Crystal Baxley.

Art is Forever
Get a tattoo inspired by artwork in the Museum collection. Choose from a selection of prepared tattoo designs by local illustrators. Seen above: Tattoo design by Adam R. Garcia, inspired by Robert Colescott’s “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”, and design by Kate Bingaman-Burt, inspired by Kenny Scarf’s “TV Rama” (tattooed onto herself!). Tattooing sessions ran from 10am – midnight and were FREE! Not ready to commit? Temporary tattoos were also available… Organised by Jason Sturgill. Photo credits: Jason Sturgill & Kate Bingaman-Burt.

Art As Experience. Guaranteed.
This installation officially certifies visitor experience as works of art. An on-site notary performs the certification. It’s a nod to Art & Social Practice and also acknowledges that visitor interpretation contributes significantly to make up a complete art experience. Organised by Ariana Jacob.

Shine a Light took place on October 14, 2011 from 10am – midnight. The soundtrack? Portland Art Museum’s very own radio station, WPAM, accepting requests and dedications all day, for one day only.

Title photo credit: Oregonian

A lovely idea, so simple: Karoake Cinema presents muted old film footage and lets participants improvise the dialogue in voice-over. They can also take instruments lying around and make their own musical soundtrack. The set up is a straightforward invitation — a set of microphones standing in front of a wall projection, a set of instruments on the floor. The bold drama scenes showed on screen serve as exciting motivation to take part.

Interestingly, Celine Semaan, the creator of Karaoke Cinema, said initially she had the film’s original subtitles showing, for inspiration, or guidelines – but people plead to have the subtitles removed and started improvising, happy to take a more creative role in the project.

You may have heard of a similar project, Teevx, which is in fact the project’s former edition. Teevx imagined a rather complex screen interface to let participants not only create their own soundtrack, but also draw or write live on TV footage. Teevx was meant to be a call to take over the media, a call for freedom of expression (and it also made it to Cannes Festival).

Karaoke Cinema’s call to revolution is a little more subtle — the project rather focuses on the performance of participants. Its character finds a new elegance — a simplicity focusing on the playfulness at the heart of the improvisation game.

Watch a quick film!

More here!

When we first started talking to other professionals about their experience with participatory practice, we asked a lot of exploratory questions and ended up getting a lot of advice. One piece of advice which has rung true again and again is that participation necessitates curation. That is – if you openly ask people to contribute or provide content, then you can expect people to do and contribute things their way, any way, and not necessarily the way you had hoped they would. Which is why a curator makes sense – someone needs to review, maintain, and keep things going towards the original aim, or at least towards a constructive end. And then there is also the responsibility which comes with acting as that curator, which can lead to serious issues.

Two recent New York Times articles feature worldwide participation, user generated content and the role of curation at a massive, massive scale.

Policing the Web’s Lurid Precincts
link to the original article is here

The world’s largest social networking companies who thrive on the contribution of user generated content, including youtube, myspace, yahoo, microsoft and unnamed others, all employ Internet Content Reviewers to sift through photographs that people upload to big social networking sites to keep illicit material from being posted. With the rise of web sites built around material submitted by users, these kinds of screeners have never been in greater demand. Usually websites have users flag questionable content, then hand off material for review. For the people reviewing the (often extraordinarily) offensive content the toll is a damaged sensitivity towards the imagery they see, and a real need for emotional support.

As Facebook Users Die, Ghosts Reach Out
link to the original article is here

Facebook has had trouble automating the task of figuring out when one of its users has died. It leaves the question of what should happen once they do know a person has died – Should that person’s account be closed? Be put in a new status, as ‘memorialised’? Or just left as it is? Who should decide? Opinions vary widely and you can see them here.

Started in 2002, Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July’s online project, Learning to Love You More, reaffirms the notion that rules are a good thing. As they explain it:

“Sometimes it is a relief to be told what to do… our most joyful and even profound experiences often come when we are following other people’s instructions. When we are making crepes from a recipe, attempting to do a handstand in yoga class, or singing someone else’s song. Sometimes it seems like the moment we let go of trying to be original, we actually feel something new.”

Visitors to the website (which you can find here at – www.learningtoloveyoumore.com) are invited to accept an assignment, complete it by following the instructions and send in a report via text, photo, video, etc. Reports are posted online in a catalogue of over 5,000 the last time they counted.

The formula they’ve developed delivers rich, captivating, meaningful content. It drives people to action in all sorts of ways. What helps make this model of soliciting creative contributions successful:
- Assignments which provide rules and structure for contributions.
- Authorship is shared, the artists maintain curatorship but content is entirely made up of participant work. Participants are also free to curate their own exhibitions of assignments.
- The modest but gratifying reward of getting published and being part of a community.

After 7 years of assignments, contributions, exhibitions, screening broadcasts and involvement of over 8000 people, the site finally closed up shop. All assignments and contributions are still available for browsing on the site, and you can purchase the book there too.

Assignment 55: Photograph a significant outfit

Assignment 34: Make a protest sign and protest

Assignment 39: Take a picture of your parents kissing

Assignment 50: Take a flash photo under your bed

*All photos taken from the book

New typeface for auction on ebay in July. Via facebook, designers can contribute additional characters to modify the existing pool of characters. With each ebay bid a new special character will be introduced, eg. a comma, squiggle, question mark etc.

What’s interesting here is that while there is an open invitation for contributions, the public will only see the results of those contributions in direct proportion to however many ebay bids are made. I can’t tell if that makes me want to contribute a design more, or to bid more… It’s an experiment and we’ll be curious to see the results.

Check them out on facebook here.

We’re looking forward to seeing one of the iconic art institutions of the world open itself up to content from you, me, crazy cats, chocolate rain, anyone really…

The Guggenheim is collaborating with YouTube and inviting submissions from artists anywhere in the world, with hundreds of shortlisted videos to be featured on their website. Read the UK’s Guardian newspaper article here.

Its an exciting time to see how cultural institutions choose their method of reaching a broader public, and particularly how far the offer of authorship extends when inviting the public to contribute, choose content and vote.

This is David Byrne’s “Playing the building” presented by Creative Time, at the Battery Maritime building, in New York city.

The public was invited to tinker with this church organ connected to metal beams, pillars, pipes all around an old ferry terminal, for them to make sounds. This turned the entire space into one big large scale instrument.

The composer set the stage for any visitor to take part in making music. He nicely set out the rules and instructions to make the instrument work – with labels on what is being triggered if they press here, and how to go quickly if they press there.

David Byrne has succeeded in sharing his musical fascination with the greater public and made it an accessible and playful experience.

You can see more information here

When people have the power to change how their environment works. Where petty theft is rampant, these hand made signs warn passers-by in El Born neighbourhood, Barcelona.