One of the nice things about working in Public Programs at a contemporary art center is that trolling the web for interesting artist projects is considered “work,” or “program research.” A find for today is Futurefarmers, a design and new media outfit in SanFrancsico that conducts projects linking interdisciplinary artists with science and enviornmental actions. The many projects of note include the Gardening Superfund Site, an art project that fosters discourse around the issues of nature preservation, industry, and activism. “By providing information and facilitating activities with students and community groups we are making a call to action to high tech industries to take responsibility for their actions.” The goal of this project is to plant native seeds at Superfund Sites in the Silicon Valley (dispersed via “seed sculptures” ) that will attract butterflies to the area, and garden the site with native plant life.
Also check out the Botanical Gameboy. Imagine all video games running on the alternative energy of fruit!
Along with Walker’s Art on Call system, there has been an interest here in trying new projects in the realm of interpretive materials. It seems like we should be thinking about the various ways people like to get information, other than from reading labels, and design strategies to appeal to that sense of variety. Art on Call is a great way to learn about the Walker and works on view in an auditory way–visitors use their cell phones in the galleries to access info about artists, works of art, etc. Another strategy is the “Look Closer” cards, sort of a label-plus. These cards are designed to be used by visitors while standing in front of 8 select works in on view in the galleries. Unlike a traditional label, the cards include source imagery, as well as (hopefully) thought provoking questions about the works. The cards were modeled in part on somethings being done at the Denver Art Museum, a true bastion for thoughful in-gallery educational experiences, as well as the idea that museum education should happen everywhere within a museum, not just in a specific educational area.
Trouble is, we just put up the racks with the small selection of cards and visitors seem to be walking off with them- I’m sure assuming they’re meant to be taken home. Can an interpretive material that’s meant to be used only while in the gallery work- or do visitors want a takeaway too much? Either people just take things blindly or have decided to ignore our conveniently placed “please return when finished.”
I wouldn’t have it believed myself…but I read it on the on the CAN site…Dig this! Synchronized Swimming gets into the community engagement/art game in Baltimore…No, I’m not kidding. Yes, I said “syn-chro-nized swim-ing.”
Ok, here’s the deal…Fluid Movement, a collective that describes themselves as ..” a Baltimore-based performance art group that juxtaposes complex subject matter with delightful and unexpected mediums…and creates art that is accessible, and often educational, for audiences of all ages and backgrounds.” Don’t you just want to hug these guys. And now the meat of the mission… which you’ve got to appreciate if you’re an urbanite like myself…”Our performances are created for urban spaces, in Baltimore and beyond. We encourage a sincere understanding and appreciation for city life and city dwellers through our work.” I tell you…that kind of mission statement makes the heart sing! And they do this EVERY YEAR and feature 68 performers! Oh, to be in Baltimore in summer (Sigh)
You know I just can’t help thinking these guys would be great at Free First Saturday - the Walker’s monthly family jamboree. Can’t you just imagine them doing their thing in the Spoonbridge and Cherry pond. (I’m going to keep that thought and use it to ease Insomnia) Tell me you don’t dig that idea… it’s divine…Spoonridge and Swimming. Enough already Reggie - you genius you!
Repost from Community Arts Network
Beat the heat in Baltimore August 5-7, 2005, at Fluid Movement’s fourth annual synchronized-swimming extravaganza, featuring 68 community performers.This year’s performance, “Postcards from the Deep End: The Flurry Family Vacation,” takes place in “Fluid Movement’s trademark swimming, dancing, glittery style!”
Go to this entry:
http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2005/07/everybody_into.php
The world of marketing has long relied on metrics like “frequency” and “impressions” to gauge the success of its projects, but that’s all changing: just announced, the new measure will be “engagement.” Intending to reflect “the complexity of today’s media choices and consumer-empowered media consumption” (in the Advertising Research Foundation’s words), the term is a bit iffily defined: it seems to have to do with how invested you are with a product or company (do you subscribe to emails or RSS’s? tell your friends? buy regularly?). “Civic engagement” has been around for awhile too, and looking at how often “consumer engagement” appears in a Google News search, perhaps the time is fast approaching when engagement–civic or otherwise–could benefit from some new terminology.
Following up Reggie’s post linking the Walker’s conceptual Civic Engagement map with Ecotrust’s pattern map of a Conservation Economy, WorldChanging offers a fascinating link-dump on the aesthetics of geographical and conceptual mapping. Of particular interest are a “What if” map that depicts how the actual life of its creator could’ve deviated–or still could as he moves forward, and a French site that correlates the country’s vote on the EU constitution with bloggers and websites that supported the “no” campaign.
Another great mapping project/social critique comes from the Institute for Applied Autonomy: “a web-based application charting the locations of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras in urban environments,” iSee helps users “find routes that avoid these cameras (”paths of least surveillance“) … allowing them to walk around their cities without fear of being ‘caught on tape’ by unregulated security monitors.”
More on mapping at Future Feeder.
Last night Walker Visual Arts Curator Siri Engberg led the tour guides on a walk through training session in the recently opened exhibition Chuck Close: Self-Portraits, 1967-2005. This was the second part of a two-part training session, the first being a slide talk two weeks ago. The slide talk is a great opportunity to see the works and really be able to sit and take notes, but the gallery walk throughs provide such a unique opportunity to hear about the organization and arrangement of the exhibition from the Curator firsthand. Although packed with volunteers and visitor services staff, with everyone working hard to find a place to stand or plant a stool, I think everyone was enamored with Close’s enormous visage staring out at us from the gallery walls. The walk-through also provided a chance to really learn about his amazing techniques, and incredible facility with so many different media, from oil on canvas, to etching, papermaking, and daguerreotypes.
Since the publication of Art and Civic Engagement: Mapping the Connections, I’ve been especially interested in powerful examples of conceptual maps and pattern languages - tools that can help organizations and individuals navigate in difficult mental terrain and complex conceptual environments. So, I was delighted when my friend Paul Schmelzer hipped me to Ecotrusts’ online pattern map that provides a framework for creating a “Conservation Economy.”
One of the most difficult mental terrains to navigate these days (mostly because of all the smoke and mirrors laying about) is the environment. And Orwellian initiatives like “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forests” aren’t helping to clear the air. So, what are we to do? How do we create a sustainable world? How do all the pieces fit together to create “an ecologically restorative, socially just, and reliably prosperous society?”
Well, thank the Green Goddess that Ecotrust, a conservation non-profit dedicated to the creation of a “Salmon Nation” has web-published a dynamic and multi-pronged concept map that shows 57 patterns that form “a visual and conceptual framework that can be used to inspire innovation, focus planning efforts, and document emerging best practices.” Exactly what the Walker hopes to accomplish with the Art and Civic Engagement concept map…only in the context of a contemporary art center.
And, can art and artists make meaningful and esthetic contributions to the creation of a more ecologically sustainable world? I say yes…but then perhaps I’m some sort of utopian.
(For an especially ambitious example of an art and environment project check out Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “The Land” or peep the many “eco-art” projects listed on the Community Arts Network)
Yesterday morning Calvin Klein launched a new “live billboard” in Times Square: around the clock, 40 gaunt models simulate partying (sans sex and booze) inside what’s supposed to be a bottle of CK One. I suppose it’s the next step in the billboardification of the world: we’ve got ad-tattooed foreheads, nuns selling ad space on coats that are given to homeless people, even Disney’s less-than-altruistic act of outfitting LA’s street people with Incredibles gear. As advertising’s scales tip even further into the crass, garish, and eye-assaulting, here’s a nice idea for a counter-balance:
In Canada, Them.ca proposes a Beautiful City Billboard Fee, a modest annual tax of $6 per square foot of ad space assessed to billboard companies, with revenues going toward the creation of ad-free public art. In Toronto alone, revenue from the city’s approximately 5,000 billboards could raise $6,000,000 for public art in a single year.
[Photo via Myszka.]
“Civic engagement” is an incredibly broad term, running from get-out-the-vote drives to the Walker’s interest in linking contemporary art with community concerns to… cell phones? Apparently. The global conference MobileActive: Cell Phones for Civic Engagement, to be held in Toronto September 22-24, will look at how this not-quite ubiquitous technology can be instrumental in participatory democracy, human rights work, and community building.
Sound far-fetched?
USA Today reports how SMS (short message service) has been used in political movements from South Korea to the Middle East to the Phillippines, where in a beautiful case of “mobile democracy,” text messages were used to organize the demonstrations that contributed to the downfall of President Joseph Estrada in 2002. WorldChanging catalogues other examples where cell-phone technology has been pivotal in social change, from ways the technology can spark bottom-up economic development in poor nations in Africa to the use of textmobbing as a form of political protest. And Howard Rheingold links to a story about how the poor in the Philippines use “texting” for the collective good:
Finding that his family has run out of its supply of rice, Nestor Santos (not his real name) pulled out a cellular phone from his pocket, keyed in the order and promptly sent it via short message service (SMS) … to his order taker. A few hours later, the ordered sack of rice to be shared by Nestor and his neighbors arrived.
This account may sound like just another technology-assisted lifestyle story, except for the fact that Nestor collects garbage for a living, and lives in a former dumpsite that still has a huge mound of compacted decades-old filth — and a much-reduced stench outsiders still find overpowering — to remind residents of their even sorrier past.
