art project

 

this is the short video introduction/user guide to google's art project (the topic of the articles i chose for discussion on tuesday).

emily's link to youtube controversy

i tried to post this reaction to emily's link to the article about the evanston school board video on youtube but for some reason blogger is not letting me comment on blogs right now, so i'll put it here instead:

great find, emily! paulina and i are doing the first techno teach-in on web-based content sharing on tuesday, and this could be an interesting thing to bring up.

if i understood the article correctly, if the man who posted the video had recorded the meeting himself instead of trying to post the state's video, youtube would not have intervened to take it down... these kinds of copyright laws are so ambiguous, and they make me pity the people whose job it is to moderate these kinds of sites.

mp3 experiment: chicago

this is the youtube video of the mp3 experiment that happened a couple of years ago in lincoln park during improv everywhere's tour of select us and canadian cities. the weather wasn't great, but i think the addition of umbrellas to the mix creates an even cooler visual effect.

testing the theory: exploring museum "practices"

when ray mentioned towards the end of our discussion of museum 2.0 last week that nina simon is known to accept facebook friend requests and respond to personal emails in record time, i decided to try it out.

i've been talking to cheri, liz, and kevin of the student museum coalition (smc) about putting on an event at the museum this spring as part of, or perhaps as an addendum to, their treasure hunt series. my idea started when i read about the mp3 experiments, a series of projects put on by the new york-based improv everywhere, in this post on her blog.

i wondered if, in addition to encouraging visitors to navigate the galleries, locate works of art, and glean information from labels, it would be possible to facilitate a more loosely structured exploration of museum space and resources, and encourage visitors to converse and interact with each other, by designing a podcast that would function like the mp3 experiments, but in the museum.

however, i was hitting a wall with regard to a few logistical issues, so i decided that i would see if ms. simon had any advice for me. less than 12 hours later, I got my advice:

It sounds like what you are conceiving is a collection of "practices" for experiencing art. Instead of treating them sequentially (which may make some people feel like they have to rush through them to complete the set), I'd recommend a starting message that says something about there being lots of ways to experience art, pick one or two to play with today, etc.  I also wonder whether you constrain yourself if they're all audio-based. You could have a few that are on cards and some that are audio-based - that would encourage more social and spontaneous use.

she also pointed me in the direction of an online voicemail box system that could be used in lieu of a podcast or a series of audio tracks. this seems like a great idea, since it eliminates the need to download something onto an mp3 player; audio-based activities can be accessed instead by the use of a cell phone.

anyways, i know this is a sketchy insight into the project i'm developing, but i just wanted to say thanks for the tip and let everyone else know that nina simon really is as cool and helpful and intelligent as her blog suggests. also, if anyone is interested in talking more about this proposed event and/or wants to get involved, let me know! peace out.

art mobs

check out this project that started at marymount manhattan:
http://mod.blogs.com/art_mobs/

many museums have started to offer an alternative to snooze-inducing audio tours by posting podcasts of various themes to their websites, but i still find most of them a little long and boring. the art mobs folks didn't need or have moma's permission to do this project, but what if museums asked students or the general public to submit podcasts they recorded themselves about one or several works in their galleries, and then edited them and made them available? i'd listen. would you?

on arts education and 21st-century skills

i just read the article that emily posted for discussion next week, and i was struck by this short paragraph:

At this point, I believe that the prevailing public perception is that arts education is only for young people who want to be artists—“Glee” wannabes. If we applied this mindset to science, we would teach science only to students who aspired to be chemists, biologists, or astronomers.

this is so on-target. as the daughter of two "left brained" lawyers, i shied away from art a lot when i was a kid, believing that since i would surely never be an artist, there was nothing for me to explore by creating things. i don't think anyone ever told me this, but it's how i felt, and it's something that i regret. it's such a shame to waste the adventurousness and inventiveness of childhood by planning out kids' futures for them years before they have any inkling of what they really want to be when they grow up.

and even if what they grow up to be is a lawyer, why should that stop them from discovering other outlets for their creativity?

a favorite web resource

tastespotting:
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