Technological growth has promoted an ever-expanding sense of connectivity through the worldwide web. The digital age has also provided increasing opportunities for digitally based artworks. In the same moment, an interdisciplinary shift of focus is being recognized in the arts. Participation, interactivity, collaboration, social engagement and activism are all legitimate ingredients included in the art making process, which can be further applied through the Internet. Archival storage is made use through websites as a learning tool that contextualize, document, present and market these relationally focused creative projects.
Remix theory sits closely at home with the environmental concerns that are on the forefront of artist minds. By re-purposing everyday materials, artists are considering the discarded as medium for powerfully activating their intended meaning. Often this message contains a political motivation, which empowers the audience to take action and get involved. Teaming up with experts in aligned fields of studies, such as science, the art studio has become an playful, experimental lab. This too is a remix in time that appropriates from the past. For example, without scientific experimentation with chemical processes, there would be no photographic medium.
Communication is at the core of the Public Privacy. Advocacy and agents for change these artists promote issues of environmental and social concern by connecting and engaging with the public. Through this artistic practice we reach dialogue and awareness. Motivated by a value for the everyday and life itself, the artists included in Public Privacy recall history and acknowledge past pioneers of the same joined efforts. By embracing the beauty that surrounds us, artists research to make an informed creatively vision of a better world.
A worldwide website allows these works to reach an even wider audience. It is an essential tool in cultivating a connective network of community. The private is permitted to the public in an open and fluid manner that speaks to a universal relationship of human similarity and unity. At the same time pressing issues that relate to this ability to live in harmony are addressed an the public is informed to make better choices for common good.
LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE
Collaborative team of artists Harrell Fletcher, Miranda July and web designer Yuri Ono host the online exhibition for their project Learning to Love you More. The online project took place from 2002-2009, which operated as an Internet archive for artistic submissions. Creative assignments were offered to the public and upon completion the report (photograph, drawing, etc.) were exhibited at the Learning to Love you More website. The website cites, "Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the perspective nature of these assignments was intended to guide people towards their own experience." With this project social engagement is viewed as a form of art. In an interview with Miranda July she explains,
"There's so much on the Internet.....there's so many opportunities to put your face online or write what your hobbies are or something and at certain point its like who cares? That's somehow not doing the job of feeling a connection."
One of the galleries with in the website titled "Love" pays homage to inspiration from the musician Mirah to book pages of artist Robert Smithson to Harrell Fletcher's neighbor Fran Van Storm letters to the neighbors. This particular section of the website pushes the concept of the project that everyone is an artist, permitting creative license and authority is also given to the participants as artists in creating vision. This blurs the line between subject and maker, audience and artist, and challenges the art expertise of the exclusive domains such as the museum and gallery.
Over 8,000 people participated in the assignments during the project's duration. The website domain remains as a piece in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's collection, which was acquired in 2010. As documented through the website's galleries, the project archive also lives through a published book and museum and gallery exhibitions. The open and highly accessible platform of the website allowed a wider audience to participate in the work, while as the same time presents theories of universal creativity in art.
THE WAFFLE SHOP
Jon Rubin is an artist working through a cross disciplinary approach, which includes social practice, video art performance and sculpture. His work explores "social dynamics of public spaces, focusing on individual and group behavior." One of his major projects The Waffle Shop and Conflict Kitchen is created in collaboration with the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University where Rubin is the assistant professor of art. Of his role as an educator he explains, "Part of my job is expanding the definition of art for both the students and the public. The students are responsible for creating a cultural experience that adds something unique to the city. Within that, there are many learning objectives, like working collaboratively with community members and learning about the social role of art in society."
The Waffle Shop functions in a multi-faceted realm as a neighborhood restaurant, which is open on the weekends. The website houses live broadcasting of a talk show with the customers. The rooftop features a changeable billboard, which is not only on display to the public viewers of Pittsburgh, but also presented to a broader audience through the Waffle Shop homepage.
Rubin describes, "Our talk show deals with performance and popular culture. Building an interior deals with sculpture and commerce. We're designing promotional materials, painting signs, editing video, as well as running a small business — we deal with a lot of skill sets. Just in making the talk show, you're pulling upon performance, writing, acting, and constructing social situations, which is an art process in itself. It's very interdisciplinary."
FUTUREFARMERS
Founder of the website and collective Future Farmers
Amy Franceschini collaborates with scientists, designers and the public on issues surrounding conflict between humans and nature. In these works she proposes solutions to environmental problems. Works in drawing, sculpture, design, net art, public art and gardening are represented through the Future Farmers online archive. In an interview Franceschini recounts the prolific, ever-expanding boundaries of joined efforts that makes these works of art possible.
"FutureFarmers began unconsciously. It was really a hiding place from other activities, but soon it was found and people began asking us to do projects of all kinds. I don't ever think of us as a 'business'; that seems to take all the fun and freedom away. I can't really even think of a certain beginning point of FutureFarmers. I still feel like it hasn't even begun. The thing that inspires me to continue working as FutureFarmers is the constant learning and opportunity to collaborate with new practitioners depending on the job at hand."
Within the website archive is a Design section which includes the interactive game Transportation Town. This net art piece feels like the video game Sim City. It empowers participants to create a town using effective urban planning, while learning environmental effects of human population growth and expansion.
According to the artist, "as designers we have tools and knowledge to create functional, sustainable solutions for a better social, economic, political environment. The organizational skills that come along with being a designer in terms of planning are such a resource. It is time NOW to put them to good use and offer our skills to groups that are working HARD towards a better world." FRITZ HAEG
Fritz Haeg also utilizes the web as a means for archive. The Internet functions as an important tool in housing the documentation of his site specific works which take form as gardens, architecture, performance, design, dance, and ecology. Another collaboratively working artist whose work entails various roles his website functions to convey the depth of his role as an artist as well as the role of his partnerships with other artists and communities.
In a Creative Time interview Haeg clarifies his social practice by recalling, "Buckminster Fuller believed that specialization and trades were a form of slavery instituted by 'the man' (he called them the pirates) to prevent any one person from seeing the big picture, which would be a threat to their power." This statement allows insight into the Do-It-Yourself style that is encouraging of his community garden projects Edible Estates. The website further serves in the educational process by allowing a broader audience to access information and instructions on gardening.
Haeg also explore public and private space through his living residence in LA. He hosts public functions in his private home through his Sundown Salon. Much like the spirit of the Happenings or Black Mountain College, connections are made among participants who come to the space to be involved in events, gatherings, and performances. Intended to produce a free exchange of ideas, it is an experimental social lab that cultivates a network of creativity.
FALLEN FRUIT
The last group included in the Public Privacy exhibit is another LA based collective group, Fallen Fruit. Examining "urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community through" by relying on fruit as the focus of their work.
They share their Public Fruit Maps to the public through the website interface, which guides viewers to fruit trees in specific neighborhoods throughout the United States. The notion that private property overlaps into the public is an important aspect to consider when experiencing and exploring the fruit maps.
As stated on EyeBeam the group also effectively finds "gallery-ready derivatives of their participatory actions."
In addition to their performances, community collaborations, Fallen Fruit creates audio, videos and digital images in order to further convey their ideas relating to fruit. An intervention-approach to bettering the world is apparent in their work. Urgency is present in the digital images in order to call for action from the viewer's attention. They also include how-to guides for the public to take from and bring into their private space.
