Sightings: Research: Example Projects

CREATIVE WEB LINKS

This page was prepared for artists working on the Sightings Project with Kids' Own in Spring of 2003. All of these external links are inspiring and interesting, but may not lead to places you should bring young artists along to; trust your judgement.

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Find something cool? We want to grow this page. Please contact us with suggestions.

Below are some links in loosely defined categories to give you inspiration, and a starting point for further surfing. Not everything here is collaborative.

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1. Web art - visual, poetry, radio, music...

DIGITAL ARTWORK- Non animated

HTML: http://jodi.org has been disturbing surfers for years. This site does not behave like a good website should, using mostly just HTML and Javascript, the pages pop-open, close and blink at you. As they say: "jxdn.xrg wjbsntj ns cx[ntjrnnt[ntnvj"; http://www.fruitybites.com A satirical website, "Here we reach the focus of this project, Fruitybites is a hoax site, set up with the aim of drawing attention to the problem of packaging waste in Ireland."; http://mouchette.org/ Controversial website of supposed 13 year old French girl, Mouchette; once censored for criticising the work of a filmmaker

DIGITAL ARTWORK- Animated

There are many ways to move images on computers. In addition to video, there are programs that display sequential images, or draw lines according to code.

See a variety of Artists' Projects for display on the web at Dia Center for the Arts: http://www.diacenter.org/rooftop/webproj/

Also at the BBC, where users submitted their work http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/digital/yourwork/

SHOCKWAVE: Born with a Broken Tongue, by a student at DIT; award winning- "The objective of the project is to educate people about stuttering."
http://www.dmc.dit.ie/martin/
FLASH: 'Soundtoys' shows work by a variety of artists; interactive sound peices
Http://www.soundtoys.net/; Levitated shows examples of algorithmic art (creates animations using math), and lets you download the source and see how it works. http://www.levitated.net/daily/index.html; Flash is used here as a simple video, displaying stop-motion photographs sequenced on the time-line
http://turbulence.org/Works/sms4/09.html another http://turbulence.org/Works/sms4/16.html
JAVA: Drag and Click to draw on screen, watch it respond
http://www.singlecell.org/mt/index.html; Click around, looks like cells dividing. By Golan Levin, a graduate of mit media laboratory aesthetics + computation group; The entire Star Wars movie in animation created with drawings made of letters and numbers
http://www.asciimation.co.nz/

VISUAL - Traditional forms of art, with online opportunities for sharing ideas and sharing your work

Do It Manuals: In the true manner of conceptual Fluxus artists; projects are listed here. You choose your project, follow the instructions and send your results. Includes instructions by well-known contemporary artists such as Gilbert & George and Matthew Barney. Excellent introduction to the fun of conceptual art and multiples.; http://www.e-flux.com/projects/do_it/manuals/0_manual.html
The Barbie Prize: An Exhibition of Children's Art, often referred to as the Turner Prize for children's art; http://www.barbieprize.co.uk/
Graphics Galleries: At the Digital Drawing Board, work is organised into galleries of themes or classes, read the definitions
Rhizome.org: Net-art international community of professional digital artists and opportunities For example: "Button is an art collective gathering together artists from around the world to exhibit their work in a uniform and unique format the one inch button... artists of all ages and media are encouraged submit their tiny art to this unjuried exhibition." http://www.projectbutton.com features an online gallery where submissions are displayed with artists names, location and description of their entry." http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?14644
Access Art Workshops: Online workshop on Installation Art. This is one example of many step-by-step workshops at Access Art, geared towards children and teachers http://www.accessart.org.uk/ivc/intro.html

VIDEO

Using Quicktime to compress video for the web, makes it easy to share video. http://www.play-control.com/nutura/, Nutura: A 1 minute movie about Trees
Participants created a tiny video, and even soldered and created the tiny video screen
http://www.mit.edu/~sdh/iap03/tinystories.html

MUSIC

Math makes beautiful music at Tune Toys, "In this toy, you enter a word in a form, and get back algorithmic music based on that word." See how this works and view the source code for this and see how math makes music.
http://www.nosuch.com/music/matic.htm
New York Times offers ideas for creating music in the classroom

POETRY

You can submit your work to this site for publication.http://www.poetry4kids.com/
BBC offers a poetry section of their site http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/wordplay/
Electric Poetry on the Tube in London

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2. Collaborative projects

Learning to Love You More http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/: "Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher and various guests." Assignments include 'Make a paper replica of your bed' or 'recreate a poster you had'
Postcard X http://postcardx.net/: A random address appears of someone's name. Send them a postcard. Post your own address and someone will send you one.
The Mirror Project http://www.mirrorproject.com/: This is a growing community of like-minded individuals who have photographed themselves in all manner of reflective surfaces.
Twenty Things http://20things.org/: An art swap "here's how it works: 20 people make 20 things in 20 days. each mails their 20 things with a SASE. in return, each gets that SASE back, filled with one of each thing made in the group."
Art Junction http://www.artjunction.org/: This site promotes arts-collaboration through the use of technology. Also check out their discussion board for seeking partners, and sharing technology help, and collaborative arts projects. The excellent links section has info about tele-collaboration.
Also: "Community Stories is an ongoing project sponsored by Art Junction that invites teachers and students to research the visual, oral, and written records of their own communities for stories and images to share with others. "
Free Manifesta: http://www.freemanifesta.org/: Links to documentation of 'free art' projects. Some artists create work and leave it on park benches, some hand it out on the streets. Or you can contact artists directly, there is one offer for a free colouring book.

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3. Community based projects

Feral Arts (Australia)

Feral Arts is an incorporated community association... We employ a team of visual arts, video and digital media artists.... Feral Arts is recognised as one of Australia's leading community cultural development groups. We have developed our own approach, combining long-term local partnerships with a focus on research, innovation and new technologies. We act as go-betweens - linking the cultural interests and experiences of people on a local level with key government decision makers and business stakeholders. We develop and promote models of locally driven arts practice, supporting growth in the arts and cultural sectors, and the broader community. http://www.feralarts.com.au/

Also see and example project from Feral Arts: Placeworks.org is a multimedia database operating as an on-line keeping place and community development forum.

Epals

"Over 4.5 million students and teachers are building skills and enhancing learning with ePALS. Established in 1996, ePALS has 75,968 classroom profiles bringing people in 191 countries together as cross-cultural learning partners and friends." http://www.epals.com/

Center for Digital Storytelling

Center for Digital Storytelling. "The Center for Digital Storytelling is a non-profit project development, training, and research organization dedicated to assisting people in using digital media to tell meaningful stories from their lives. " http://www.storycenter.org/

Here! Hear!! Parkville!!!

A map of a local community area, Parkville in Hartford CT, USA, which highlights of points, and audio to hear. A Real Art Ways Digital Skills Project. Participants, who are youths aged 13-17 are paid for their time in the workshops. http://parkville.realartways.org/

Articles for Further Reading

The Community Arts Network offers links to internal and external articles of interest. There are also links to projects. http://www.communityarts.net/ A pull-down menu has more options. See these examples.

The Center for Children and Technology offers example of their research

Schools and Technology
Online Communities: Investigating the power of digital technology to facilitate communication and collaboration among educators and students.

Projects in Ireland

Schools Integration Project "The vision for the Information Age Towns programme is to have all sectors in selected towns collaborating and interacting together, through the use of ICT, " http://www.sip.ie/Projects/?themeID=1

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4. Work by young people

BBC offers a showcase for your own digital work:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/art/gallery/
Using new media and emerging technologies with Chicago's Inner city youth.
http://streetlevel.iit.edu/
US-based 'Listen-up' from PBS (Public Broadcasting System) aims 'to help youth be heard in the mass media, contributing to a culture of free speech and social responsibility. '
http://www.pbs.org/merrow/listenup/
View examples of projects carried out by KQED Youth Media Corps (San Fransisco, USA) in collaboration with youths between 14 and 18. Their aim is to support "collaboration between media professionals and youth. Young people in the program develop media literacy skills to evaluate and respond to media leading to a more informed and empowered citizenry".
http://www.kqed.org/topics/education/
In collaboration with artists, an example of 'Free Art': "neXtOper@ for cell.phones interactive/collaborative work through Internet and GSM networks (with cellular phones) with an educational project involving the children of Middle State School"
http://www.freemanifesta.org/artists/malgliati.html
Examples of online-galleries to show kids' work. This one by ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in Australia shows children from countries as diverse as United Arab Emirates, Greece, Kuwait, Australia and http://www.abc.net.au/children/linkup/latest/ NB: This site was prepared a couple of year ago, and while some links are 'dead', it still gives a good sense of the concept.
Also http://www.cyberkids.com/cw/ offers a typical type of online-gallery for kids work. A peek at the 'forum' they had to take down due to government regulations also gives a sense of the difficulties in providing safe, moderated interactive places for children in a global context. (!)
Students display work they've created with Flash. Also the teacher explains his ideas of why to use flash with Flash and practical ideas for conducting classes.
http://www.tygh.co.uk/students/

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5. Creative Resources

http://www.walkerart.org/jsindex.html Probably one of the most respected sources of information on interactive art. Creators of http://www.artsconnected.org/
Tate Web Art: curates and hosts netart, with critical writing on the subject as well. http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/ Also read an article with an Intro to Net Art: 'Art meet Net, Net meet Art'
SFMOMA - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissions and curates online work in this space: http://www.sfmoma.org/espace/
Newsgrist e-zine "covers the intersections of art, politics, digital information and technology, war (cultural and otherwise), local art market trends and transformations. Newsgrist is poised to bridge the gap between lo-tech or *old tech*, and new media technologies, and to momentarily tie the various disparate loose ends of the arts community wherever possible." To subscribe, send a message to subscribe@newsgrist.com."
Art&Science artwork http://www.asci.org/home.html
What is a print? Explained at the MoMA site http://www.moma.org/whatisaprint/
The Art Room has good ideas for offline art projectshttp://www.arts.ufl.edu/art/rt_room/
Resource site for arts at the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/art/
"SpiderSchool provides information and online curriculum for the arts community on how to integrate technology into their work." created and hosted by New York Foundation for the Arts
http://www.spiderschool.org/
ArtsEdNet at the Getty Institute: Lesson Plans and Curriculum Ideas "This section of ArtsEdNet includes a variety of teaching and learning materials, including art images. They are organised so that ArtsEdNet visitors can easily find the sort of information they want." http://www.getty.edu/artsednet/resources/
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York- Explore and Learn http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/index.asp
Found Magazine, "We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, doodles- anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. anything goes." http://www.foundmagazine.com/
K1000, Kaliber, is an online magazine with many links to the latest experiments in both commerical and non-commercial design http://k10k.net/
http://www.artnetweb.com/ "artnetweb is a network of people and projects investigating new media in the practice of art."

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Neccessary Tools:

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What is Interactive and collaborative? None of the above?

On the web you can find many examples of creative work: visual, audio, written examples that can be seen in gallery-type spaces. Yet the best creative work on the web is native, and could not exist anywhere else; it's collaborative and shared, offering the viewers a way to get involved and bring the work to life.

Interactivity is a difficult subject. Read an essay on: What is interactive? http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/interpres/

But does it resonate? After a review of online artwork with artists from our residencies they declared that everything they had seen was emotionally flat. Does this mean that the medium is no good? Or have we got to challenge ourselves? It's easy to be cynical and stop there. This essay offers a an anitdote to blind optimism, and even has a glimmer of hope at the end...
http://www.internetisshit.org/

Interactive?

Soda Constructor
Physical beauty: Move the 'wires' around, slide the bars to change gravity and friction. Build your own wire model and save your creation to send to a friend.

The Fray
The Fray, people submit stories and illustrations on topics and themes; "the fray is a place for people who believe the web is about personal expression and a new kind of art".

Tribe.net
Growing out of a desire to connect our digital lives, social software such as Tribe.net or Friendster connect people's profiles. Tribe.net allows people to join interest groups, and post questions. A bit like a discussion board, a bit like nothing they ever had before.

Collaborative?

The Mirror Project
Upload a photo of yourself in a reflective surface and add it to the Mirror Project. Even still photography becomes interactive when people find interesting ways of sharing images.

http://www.e-flux.com/
Download instructions for making your own Gilbert & George multiple. Send back documentation of your version.

http://www.explodingdog.com/
"hi my name is sam, i draw pictures, from your titles." For example: i thought that this is where i would find god

"The Community Challenge began with an online pub quiz between Timm's Coffee House, Skinningrove, and the Black Bull in Trimdon as a project under CIRA at the University of Teesside... The process of online challenges, whilst appearing to be a purely fun activity, has great benefits towards engaging communities in ICT. "