Visitor-created art: Young at Art

Finished the Storykiosk installation at Young At Art museum in Davie Florida last week. I'm delighted to see the variety of images created by visitors when given a palette of backgrounds and tools to create something with.

The interesting challenge: how do we build a structure to support visitors' creativity in a very short period of time (5-10 minutes) in a way that allows them to take ownership of their creation and make it an expression of themselves? Allowing them to talk about their creation (and record their statement about their art) is one of the key steps. Then, after recording their statement, visitors can print their art out in the gift shop for $5.

Comments

[Shelley Mannion]

What an interesting (and colorful) project. I'm curious what happens to artist stories once they are recorded and saved. Presumably they are accessible by others who are browsing saved artworks, but is there any mechanism to search them or to otherwise expose them to visitors/users? The website everyobject.net, an early experiment in user generated content initiated at the V&A (which now seems to have gone offline), also had children record video stories on unusual objects they brought from home. The problem was that these comments were rarely viewed, since only text comments were searchable. Gail Durbin's 2005 paper at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/papers/durbin/durbin.html gives a description of the site and its aims.

[Shelley Mannion]

Whoops. Correction on that paper reference above for everyobject.net. It should point to Rachel Coldicutt's 2005 paper at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2005/papers/coldicutt/coldicutt.html

[Brad]

Wow, interesting reference Shelley. Thanks!

I went to the V&A website to see if I could find any references to the Every Object project, and didn't see anything listed. It did come up when I did a search on their site though. Here's the link:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1303_every_object/events.php

It would be interesting to hear whatever became of the project (I wonder if the fact that it's not listed on their site might indicate a lower level of participation from visitors than expected?)

Currently we don't enable searching in the Young At Art project, though visitors can browse the most recent creations and ones that staff highlight.

Something I'm currently thinking about: success of visitor-created content may rely on how well we are able to pull visitors into a bigger mission that is intriguing or impactful. Not just "show us an object" or "create some art", but "Create art for our Public Service campaign on wetlands habitats." The more that visitor-content aspires to a larger mission, the better the results I think...

[Shelley Mannion]

Great points Brad. I certainly agree that a bigger vision, as well as a well-thought-through strategy for solliciting, editing, and displaying visitor contributions determines success. I also think that some communities already possess the unique properties that facilitate this sharing process. In a recent seminar in Lugano, Susan Chun had students look at two museum Flickr initiatives from MOMA NY and the Brooklyn Museum. Both encouraged visitors to take photos at the museum and post them to Flickr groups. The two projects had very different qualities, with MOMA's effort seemingly more succesful in generating discussion around the contributed photos.

Checking out the following links for more:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/themomaproject/discuss/72157600239853229/ http://www.flickr.com/groups/brooklynmuseum/

[Brad]

Thanks Shelley! I appreciate your thoughtful comments :-)

Brad