For all the idle hands of the world – this Calendar Scarf by Patrick Frey is so tempting, so satisfying. Each day you get to pull & unravel just a little bit of the year.

And it works. I found the calender installed in a friend’s office. See that sticky note in the background? This is what it says – if this calendar does not belong to you, please don’t unravel it. A sign of good invitation & incentive to participate is when you have to remind people of their manners!

If you ever had trouble remembering to flip the date on your calendar – this satisfying little action is enough incentive to keep you going. Imagine the satisfaction of coming back to work from a weekend and getting to pull three days worth of string… YES! You want to do it!

Maybe not quite as satisfying – what you have at the end? Maybe Patrick could take donations for recycling, or start a flickr page for creative crafts to do with a great big pile of string.

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

The Walker Art Center’s summer long events programme Open Field celebrates the act of gathering and sharing. With an open calendar, and field of grass with picnic tables and shade, the Walker invites people to share what they know and invite others to join.

Staff put on an excellent roster of exciting programming, and invite the general public to step up and propose their own activities – it’s literally open to anyone to fill in the blanks via a short proposal form and google calendar. A simple, yet totally transparent embodiment of the ‘open’ ethos. Events include tai chi, bull whip training, financial advice giving, color coded craft action, superhero costume & foam sword making, book club, yarn bombing, chess… you get the picture.

As a result, the Walker’s back yard is a great compliment to the exhibitions inside – it’s constantly buzzing with creative activity and helps make the museum a place to go where people can both consume and generate rich creativity.

Open Field is open from June – September 2011, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And if you miss it this year, make sure you come back for 2012.

The central activity hub for Open Field, just outside the entrance to the museum.

Choose your activity table in the shade of patio trees.

Choose wisely, so many tempting options!

Superhero sword fighting out on the field.

This is bling, it’s tasty celebratory bling. I have to admit it’s not the first time we’ve done this. I also have to admit that the cookie is already fine in the original format – delicious, perfectly portable & edible, and my intervention maybe just complicates things.

But then… what it does do – It’s a way to call out celebration, feels like it’s yours, you get to own it, wear it, feel silly wearing it, eat it.

This batch was made to celebrate the creativity and hard work students put into the final presentation of the week-long Extraordinary Ordinary workshop – A project for Re:Active magazine with Michael Etter and Scott Ponik at Field Work, in Portland, Oregon.

Cookie bling in the audience.

Scott Ponik (left) and Michael Etter.

Go ahead, try it yourself:

Ingredients:
8oz / 200g dark chocolate, broken to pieces
2 cups / 250g all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup / 175 gram / (2.5 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup / 125g packed dark brown sugar
2/3 cup/ 84g granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon mint extract
4 oz / 100g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Extra supplies:
- bakers twine, found in the cooking supply aisle, cut into lengths of about 30″
- aluminum foil, for wrapping

Directions:
1. Either in a microwave or a double boiler, melt the 8oz. of chocolate, stir until smoothe and let cool.
2. Mix flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.
3. Beat butter in large bowl until creamy, using electric mixer at medium speed. Add sugars and continue beating for 2 to 3 minutes or until mixture is light and fluffy. Add egg, vanilla and mint, and beat well. Stir in cooled chocolate.
4. Beat in flour mixture in two additions, using low speed. Stir in the 4oz. chopped chocolate. Cover and refrigerate until firm, about 4 hours or overnight.
5. Preheat oven to 350°F/ 200°C. Shape dough into chunks and place on prepared baking sheets, place dough on top of a length of string. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until no imprint remains when lightly touched with finger.
6. Wrap baked, cooled cookies with aluminum foil. Tie string at the ends to make the necklace. Delicious with milk!

Banners outside say the Wellcome Trust is for the incurably curious and they live up to it.

The Wellcome Collection is the vistor centre for the Wellcome Trust, the world’s ‘largest independent charitable foundation funding research into human and animal health’ which was funded by Sir Henry Wellcome. It’s an easy quickie detour from Euston Station in North London. A bit of background – Sir Henry Wellcome was a frontiersman, collector of strange things related to medical science and later founder of a giant pharmaceutical company.

When they say they’re for the curious, it’s a strength that keeps visitors interested. The Wellcome Collection has cracked the formula for how to get people excited about medical science – they boil exhibitions down to universal themes, topics that anyone can understand and find compelling. How are the incurably curious satiated here? Let’s get to it!

Outside, fetching window displays catch pedestrian & bus travellers passing by, displaying explorations of human science as explorers would – with intrigue and wow factors. On display here –
What if emotions were read by machines?
What if we could evaluate the genetic potential of lovers?
What if clouds were geo-engineered to rain ice cream?

They’ve got a great permanent collection upstairs, built from Henry’s collection of medical oddities. You can snoop around opening cabinets to read labels – the sort of details that make you want to explore.

You can grab a chair off the stacked shelves to go and sit wherever you please.

In the main lobby, a constant rotation of exhibits always get me coming back. What’s the trick? They’re so well curated, exploring compelling universal themes, backed with top notch science. Design is always attended to, so exhibits look as exciting as the content. Favourite exhibits from recent past –

Identity
Exploring our sense of who we are, with examples including the story of a man without memory, twins separated by time, juicy diary excerpts from the 1600s, gender identity and genetic testing. * Note the detail – the exhibit text is made via a mirror and reflection through a window, it makes your own refection a part of the exhibit image once you enter.

Things
An evolving temporary exhibit to add to & update the Wellcome Collection, with all objects gifted or loaned by the general public. You can browse all entries here.

Ambient details encourage curiosity & active exploration.

‘Ask Us’ shows up around signage, give you the feeling they really mean it.

In the permanent gallery, video booths lean over and invite you in. The physical language welcomes onlookers but also optimises sound.

Visitors are invited to leave their impressions on topics inspired by the collection. Large tables with postcards are well stocked with crayons. Cards invite visitors to create drawings inspired by the provocation words printed on the back – molecular – intestine – artificial – nature – life – art – free – beauty – sleep – amputation – microscope – etc. What’s most encouraging is that the display wall is HUGE and it’s DIY. Once you finish your drawing you don’t have to wait for a moderator to choose yours for display, just find an empty spot and voila! Seeing hundreds of other cards makes it easy to come up with your own drawing.

The Wellcome Trust is located at 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE. Exhibitions are free!
www.wellcomecollection.org

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!

A large scale act of kindness, Here You Go! is an initiative by Julie Kresen (plus Geoff Barnes and Katy DeLancey) of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and funded by Kickstarter, the funding platform website (an interesting method of participation in its own right).

Here You Go! gives out umbrellas on rainy days and asks umbrella recipients to pay it forward by giving out their own kind acts. The free umbrella project has a staff of 50 volunteers whose job it is to commit random acts of kindness on rainy days by giving away umbrellas. Waterproof postcards attached to each umbrella encourage recipients to do something kind for someone else and record the act on the card before mailing it back to the Here You Go organization.

You can see the returned post cards here. And the original Kickstarter proposal here.

photo credit: Bill Wade/Post-Gazette

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.

What are Magazine inserts good for? Usually the offer is along the lines of a BUSINESS REPLY MAIL postcard with the hope that readers will tick a box and sign up for a subscription.

This month’s Cabinet issue 37 : Bubbles featured a magazine insert as a call for help. A specially made copy of their magazine was on display for a recent exhibition at the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) in Montréal. But the copy had been stolen! CCA later found footage of the theft on its surveillance cameras.

Have you seen this Man?
You can email a tip directly at:
punishment@cabinet magazine.org
or anonymously via the handy postcard, addressed to Cabinet Issue Retrieval Taskforce:

I have some information about this lousy good-for-nothing.
His name is: ________________________________
He was last seen at: ___________________________

Too bad I don’t have any information. It’s a great advertisement for a real problem. This is a magazine insert I feel compelled to fill in and send off.