Home Page

When Fantasy Morphs Into Reality

July 23, 2018

by:

Joe Patti

You just have to read this recent piece on the ArtsPlace America website about a fictitious marketing campaign created as a graduate school thesis project that became reality.

Peter Svarzbein’s thesis project had residents of El Paso, TX excited about the return of a trolley system that went defunct about 45 years ago.

….part performance art, part guerrilla marketing, part visual art installation, and part fake advertising campaign. The project began with a series of wheatpaste posters advertising the return of the El Paso-Juárez streetcar, and continued with the deployment of Alex the Trolley Conductor, a new mascot and spokesperson for the alleged new service. Alex appeared at Comic Cons, public parks, conferences, and other public spaces to promote the return of the streetcar, while additional advertisements appeared across El Paso, sparking curiosity and excitement for the assumed real project.

Eventually, Svarzbein admitted that the project was a graduate thesis masquerading as a streetcar launch,…

But when Svarzbein heard the city of El Paso was preparing to sell the art deco trolley cars, he rallied community support for the restoration of the trolley cars and passenger service. His initiative gained the support of both the city and state department of transportation, garnering a $97 million grant to help get the cars running again.

I love what happened next,

In one of the most surprising twists in this long tale, shortly after this funding was awarded, he rode the wave of public support for the once-fictional project to win a seat on El Paso’s City Council. He is now the City Representative for District 1, and an artist is now at the table.

In his remarks about the creativity he employed to rally support for the restoration, Svarzbein reflected on the role of an artist in the community,

“there is a sort of responsibility that artists have to imagine and speak about a future that may not be able to be voiced by a large amount of people in the present. I felt that sort of responsibility. If I couldn’t change the debate, at least I could sort of write a love letter to the place that raised me.”

Advocacy, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Government Relations, Info You Can Use, New Initiatives, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

They Can Give The Arts ESP? Sign Me Up!

July 18, 2018

by:

Joe Patti

You may not have caught it last week when the Knight Prototype Fund announced awards for the development of technology to support the arts.

Of the twelve projects, four are focused on helping people interact and receive information about visual arts. Along those same lines, one seeks to utilize augmented reality glasses to deliver performance content to deaf, hard of hearing and non-English speaking audiences.

The Holy Grail of technology tools for the arts seems to be live delivery of program notes during a performance. I am not sure if the tools aren’t effective, the technology difficult to use or if there is a resistance to a common standard, but these type of projects seem to always be in the works. Back in 2004 we saw Concert Companion. Artsjournal has been promoting a live streaming of program notes by the Philadelphia Orchestra. There was also San Jose Ballet’s live casting of commentary during a performance of Sleeping Beauty last May. (Interested to know how that turned out.) Now Knight Prototype Fund is supporting MIT’s ConcertCue which plans to do much the same thing.

From an arts administration standpoint, my interest was piqued by the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts’ proposed ArtsESP which plans “Developing forecasting software that enables cultural institutions to make data-centered decisions in planning their seasons and events.”

Our ticketing system has “tomorrow” as a default choice for many reports and I have often joked how I wish it could tell me how many tickets we will sell tomorrow. Maybe we will be a step closer now…

Nina Simon is involved with the Museum of Art and History at the McPherson Center’s project to develop “…a tool in the form of a smartphone/tablet app for cultural institutions to capture visitor demographic data, increasing knowledge on who is and who is not participating in programs.”

There are also some interesting projects designed to assist communities in providing feedback.

One, appropriately called Feedback Loop has the goal of, “Enabling audiences to share immediate feedback and reflections on art by designing hardware and software to test recording and sharing of audience thoughts.”

Wiki Art Depiction Explorer wants to use “crowdsourcing methods to improve Wikipedia descriptions of artworks in major collections so people can better access and understand art virtually.”

Civic Portal looks to encourage “public input on new forms of historical monuments through a digital tool that allows users to identify locations, topics and create designs for potential public art and monuments in our cities.”

This last one reminded me of the crowdmapping projects I wrote about some communities undertaking. (Actually, that is exactly what it is.)

Any of these sound intriguing, take a look at the Knight Prototype Fund page and keep your eyes open for reports of the projects’ progress. I have already tried to see if I could learn more about ArtsESP, but couldn’t discover anything online at the moment.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, New Initiatives, State of the Arts, Terms and Ideas

3 Comments

Artists Don’t Have Poor On The Brain

July 16, 2018

by:

Joe Patti

For some reason recently I seem to be writing a lot about how money and external rewards/punishments don’t seem to motivate creative professionals.

I saw the topic come up again just last week in an opinion piece on Artnet.com (scroll down to “MIND ON MY MONEY & MONEY ON MY MIND”). Tim Schneider examines a study conducted with a small sample size that was being used to support an idea that artists are poor because their brains are hardwired to desire that state.

The article he responds to says:

Adding a twist to their findings, the researchers also discovered in a second test that artists showed a greater response in another dopamine-related part of the brain (the anterior prefrontal cortex) when they were told to reject the green squares. In other words, artists get less worked up about receiving money and more worked up when they know they can’t have it.

“Collectively, our results indicate the existence of distinct neural traits in the dopaminergic reward system of artists, who are less inclined to react to the acceptance of monetary rewards,” the researchers write.

Schneider refutes the suggestion that the study supports the idea artists’ brain chemistry creates a preference toward poverty. Not only because the sample size for the study was only two dozen people, but because he felt the poverty interpretation read too much into the results.

…Instead, the researchers simply concluded that artists “are less inclined to react to the acceptance of monetary rewards” than non-artists—meaning, in effect, that the artists in the sample prioritized cash less than normies when making certain practical decisions.

Which… duh? In fact, short of proposing that it might not be advisable on a first date to go beast mode on a full slab of ribs, I’m having a hard time imagining a less controversial statement than that one—especially to artists themselves. After all, if they didn’t find a higher value in pursuing creative goals than making money, they would just be content to sink into stable, boring jobs like the rest of us rather than braving the many risks, uncertainties, and injustices of life as an artist.

So as I have been writing throughout these posts, don’t let people convince you that you are poor because you want to be or your brain chemistry is imbalanced. Next thing you know, someone will start prescribing drugs to cure your AADS – Artist Acquisitive Deficiency Syndrome. (I am sure someone out there can come up with a more entertaining acronym).

Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Approaching Arts & Culture Experience With The Wonder Of A Child

July 11, 2018

by:

Joe Patti

The NEA’s Arts Works blog had a post, Five Questions We Have about Visiting Art Museums, which I thought had some pretty good tips for interacting with art. The post was specifically aimed at families attending museums together and offered this bit of insight.

Of course, kids might not see things exactly the same way adults do. What do you do if your little one looks at a portrait of George Washington, for example, and says our first president’s a ballerina? Evans says that’s just fine! “In terms of their experience with the portrait, that’s still very relevant and very accurate. You can ask them what they see that makes them think of a ballerina. Maybe it’s because he’s standing with his feet in a certain position or he has his hand out. That’s still their engagement with it to notice his pose,” she said.

In some cases, this is the type of question anyone might have upon first encountering an unfamiliar mode of expression. People tend to initially process a new experience in the context of something familiar.

But it also might be the case that the simpler interpretation might be more enjoyable. Hat tip to Ceci Dadisman who retweeted this:

When the kids’ text is 100% better than the adults pic.twitter.com/WqZV8kCYYL

— Dan Golding (@dangolding) July 6, 2018

I also enjoyed the following advice in answer to the question, “What’s the most important thing I should know about looking at art?

Borrowing an idea from social media, Moss suggested asking yourself (or your kids), “What is the picture, if you could post one thing, that you would want to show of your experience?” She added, “Maybe that will get you thinking, ‘Oh, I need to be thoughtful about what I’m seeing and really zoom in on the object that’s really speaking to me,’ and also really thinking about why.”

Moss also added that she wants museum visitors to, “own the experience. Don’t feel intimidated. Don’t feel like you’re not smart if you don’t like something. Bring your experiences to bear on what you see and have fun and walk away with something new in your mind.”

Again, the suggestion frames the way people can approach the museum experience in a familiar context.

Essentially, the suggestions are giving parents permission to view art through the eyes of their children but pretty much anyone should feel like they have permission to approach art in that manner regardless of whether they have children.

In some ways this reminds me of a piece I wrote a piece on being as patient with yourself as you are with a baby, inspired by Stephen McCraine’s webcomic Be Friend with Failure where he specifically draws a connection between appreciation of great art and the fact you wouldn’t criticize a baby learning to speak in the same way you criticize yourself for not quickly absorbing a new skill. Everyone needs permission both from themselves and others to acquire skills, perception, etc required for a new experience.

Art(ist) Education, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments