Crowdsourced Artworks

I had a nice talk with Leah DeVun today for an article on crowdsourcing that may be published in Wired Magazine. The article itself is crowdsourced by Assignment Zero, an experiment in open source journalism, and will include interviews with dozens of authorities on mass cooperation, including Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), Howard Rheingold (author Smart Mobs), Laurence Lessiq (chair Creative Commons), and many others. Leah interviewed me about distributed creativity, which lead me to this post. Below is an brief list of artworks made by the crowd (some willing, some unwitting). I will continue adding to this compilation.

Volunteer Partication
LearningtoLoveYouMore by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July
The Sheep Market by Aaron Koblin
SwarmSketch by Peter Edmunds
Found Magazine edited by Davy Rothbart & Jason Bitner
MobioOpera by Shu Lea Cheang
Share various participants, multiple cities
SimpleTEXT by Jonah Brucker-Cohen
PostSecret by Frank Warren
Signs That Say What You Want Them to Say, Not Signs That Say What Other People Want You to Say by Gillian Wearing

Participation by Invite
Never Been to Houston by worldwide participants, organized by Jon Rubin & Andrea Grover

Artists associated with distributed creativity and/or relational aesthetics:

Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Harrell Fletcher
Jonathan Harris
Miranda July
Sal Randolph
Jon Rubin
Trebor Scholz

Research:

Institute for Distributed Creativity
Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud
Participation edited by Claire Bishop
The Art of Free Cooperation by Trebor Scholz

Astral Projection

Never Been to Houston. I missed posting all together the info on this exhibit co-curated by Jon Rubin and me. Never Been to Houston was an exhibit Jon and I organized for Lawndale Art Center in March-April 2007. The two of us invited artists (recommended by our colleagues) from around the world to submit photos to a photosharing site of what they think Houston might look like (none of the participants had ever been), using only their city as the photographic subject. The photosharing site was then streamed into the Lawndale gallery and projected on a large rear projection screen that could be walked around 360 degrees. The exhibit evolved daily as more photos were added and participants responded to each others' contributions.

This project was not pro or con Houston, but rather a way for geographically dispersed artists to have an almost telepathic connection via shared web real estate and a virtual brain trust. Never Been to Houston continued my personal research into crowdsourced artworks and non-commodity based art practice. You can read about the exhibit here in the Houston Chronicle.

Photo by Jon Rubin, Pittsburgh, PA for the exhibit Never Been to Houston

Nebu-Lola

Houston, Texas Asthma Capital. We're still trying to understand what brings on Lola's asthma, and last week's episode seemed to be triggered by exposure to cats, coupled with a mild viral infection. Here she is looking proud to be asthmatic as she receives a nebulizer treatment at the doctor's office. As always, she turns on the charm for the camera. Thumbs up!