ArtDialogue analysis

above statement via the the Brooklyn Museum
photos below: nina meledandri at the brooklyn museum
NB: many links on this page will not be accessible to non-1stfans

In the beginning of 2009 as the twittersphere was poised to explode, I responded with three projects to the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed Open Call. While these proposals did share common elements, each revolved around a different concept:

• collaborative process
• voyeurism
• on-line community

The project chosen for the January 2010 1stfans Twitter Art Feed was ArtDialogue with its focus on community and its goal of creating a collective artwork that has been documented by this blog

1stfans members have two ways of interacting:

• virtually on Twitter & Facebook
• physically at Target 1st Saturdays’ 1stfans programming

During our May 2009 meetup, Shelly and Will explored how the physical issue of our geographically dispersed community could  be incorporated with the concept of “mingle at exclusive meetups during every Target First Saturday”.  They asked those of us present at the the Brooklyn Museum Staff Art Show to help make “shout out” videograms for 1stfans who lived far away.

My goal with ArtDialogue was to address the virtual benefit of being a 1stfans member: the creation of community through “connecting online with access to artist-created content on our 1stfans Twitter Art Feed”. The starting point for ArtDialogue was the assumption that 1stfans inherently share a belief in the power of images to communicate. During the course of the project I learned many things about that assumption but I will only address here that which is directly related to the 1stfans experience.

Being a 1stfan artist gave me the rare perspective of connecting to the twittersphere through two parallel but different real-time vantage points: one as _randomthoughts and one as 1stfans. The people I follow as _randomthoughts overlap somewhat with the 1stfans membership so while my experience of the 1stfans twitter stream was familiar it was also VERY different and I began to realize how one’s perceived experience of twitter is not necessarily as community based as it seems.

In a nutshell, I believe most people think of their social media experiences as participating in a community. When you enter a virtual environment, whether it is a chat room, a myspace/facebook page or a flickr, you see basically the same content as anyone else viewing that same page. Not so on twitter where ones experience of the twittersphere is primarily through a unique home page where the specific combination of tweets (determined by the people you choose to follow) change at a rapid pace.  There is an illusion of a shared conversation but in reality the sum total of content that one is ingesting at any given moment is not a common experience and the possibility for meaningful exchange is as much a matter of timing as it is intent.

“connecting online with access to artist-created content on our 1stfans Twitter Art Feed”; the second benefit of a 1stfans membership is made up of two things: an artwork presented through twitter and a group of people to share that experience, share being the operative word. While one aspect of the experience of art is deeply personal, art is also a cultural phenomena and museums in particular are entrusted with the responsibility of presenting art to the general public. Once a work of art is public it takes on another life as it finds its place in the world through both appreciation and criticism.

I would venture to say that virtually every 1stfan falls into one or more of the following groups:

• presenter (museum/gallery)
• critic (art intelligencia)
• appreciator (viewer/artist)

with all of us seeking connection through our shared passion. The challenge is to have the twitter art feed to be more than simply an experience on an individual level, to allow the feed to have a critical life, to facilitate it in becoming a shared experience whether only among 1stfans or eventually out in the general public.

The simplest and most obvious solution to creating a shared experience would be to RT all @1stfans replies; simple but with three major drawbacks:

• it might become tedious for the twitter feed artist
• the twitter artist may not want to RT potentially negative feedback (which is necessary to any critical discussion)
• many projects would be compromised if there were @replies inter-dispersed with the tweets that make up the art work.

At one meet-up the creation of a 1stfans “back-end” forum was discussed; a place where 1stfans could “talk amongst themselves”. This was never implemented and I would venture to say that was a wise decision: my guess is that if there was a real desire to continue dialogue outside twitter, this would already be taking place on the facebook group discussion page.

My next thought was to use twitter’s newly introduced list option to generate a list of all 1stfans followers which any interested 1stfan could subscribe to and thereby have access to tweets made by all members of the community, even people that they were not personally following. Unfortunately there are inherent problems with this solution as well:

• a public list is public which means that non-1stfans would also have access to it
• it would be tedious to sift through all tweets of all of 1stfans to find the @1stfans replies relevant to the feed

At the moment, one possible solution I see would be to generate a filtered list (through a twitter app like tweetizen) which would create real time view of all 1stfans replies. The url to this list could be embedded on the the 1stfans page (through its profile settings) which would insure immediate and secure access only to 1stfans. I am sure there may be other solutions out there (or in development) that would expand twitter in a manner conducive to having an accessible dialogue.

In summary, what I am missing as a participant on both sides of the 1stfans fence is the benefit of being in a community of art lovers: the opportunity of learning from a shared experience of a work of art. While perhaps counter intuitive, the very structure of twitter: its rapid pace and the (basically) one way flow of information, makes it difficult to accomplish this and that is perhaps a challenge for the Twitter Art Feed going forward.

I had a wonderful experience with this project and the understanding I gained with regards to social media goes beyond what I have discussed here. Thanks again to all the people who made ArtDialogue possible:

• Eugenie Tsai: John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art
• Shelley Bernstein: Chief of Technology
• Will Cary: Membership Manager
• and the 1stfans who participated in and viewed the project

(analytic stats available on request)