proposal

This proposal was an answer to an open call by the Brooklyn Museum for artists wanting to contribute a project for the 1stfans twitter feed.  1stfans is a virtually based membership to the Brooklyn Museum that uses Twitter, Facebook and Flickr as well as the physical Target 1st Saturday program to provide special content to its members. The text below is a version of the original proposal which was  updated to accommodate a curatorial request.

One of the most democratic and engaging art phenomena on the web has been the proliferation of photo memes where participants respond to common topics by posting a link on a communal web page to a related photograph of their own.

ArtDialogue will bring this concept to twitter, engaging the 1stfans community by tapping into our (presumably) common desire to give a greater voice to art. Taking its inspiration from mail art, ArtDialogue is intended to be a collective work; an image based virtual conversation. Since a driving force behind both making art and social networking is communication, this seems like a natural union.

My virtual life has always been centered around this concept of image based communication. Implemented in 2001, theARTproject was the initial manifestation of ArtDialogue; interestingly fellow 1stfan Joanie San Chirico was one of its first participants.  Nine years later the concept has evolved to ArtDialogue2.0: the twitter version. Each Monday in January an image (and it’s corresponding theme) will be tweeted for 1stfans to respond to.  1stfans can share their “thoughts” on the “subject” by joining the “conversation”.  Participation requires only that one finds an image somewhere on the web to reply with.  The connection can simply be theme based or may also respond in composition, color, etc. 1stfans can “reply” with images from anywhere: artists can post their own work, art lovers can pull from the vast resources of the web and anyone can tweet a cellphone snap.  As with any conversation, wit, insight and irreverence are welcome to keep it interesting.

As ArtDialogue evolves, an opportunity is created for different conversation “threads” to form within each theme as 1stfans continue to answer each others responses with more image replies of their own. All image responses tweeted to @1stfans will be retweeted to the entire 1stfans community and then posted on a tumblr blog making it easy to follow the flow of the conversation.  Using related twitter apps that support images (such as tweetree.com or tumblr’s dashboard) to view the twitter feed is encouraged and the 1stfans facebook and flickr groups will also be utilized to help track the project.

Goals of this project are to:

1. build 1stfans community through engagement in a common project
2. promote communication through images
3. create a collaborative artwork that can eventually be accessed by the general public

nina meledandri, artist

banner image: brooklyn museum