Tuesday, January 06, 2009

DIY Public Art

Like all things internets-related, I have mixed feelings about facebook. I joined up about a year ago to join the Bay of Islands Freecycle group but never did anything else with it. Lately, I have been more into it, finding long, lost high school friends, staying in touch with some people in Newfoundland, etc.. It has been fun but I always have a weird sense of guilt around it. Does it feed a negative kind of self-involvement? I am not sure. I have similar feelings about this blog - so much public airing of personal thoughts! Can it really be a good thing?

Today, in my trolling around facebook, I found a link to a website started by an artist called Eve Mosher. She makes public art projects that "have actions built into them" as she says in her statement. Her works are usually encountered in unexpected ways on city streets or elsewhere. She is largely interested in ecological issues and how they affect our social/cultural life. One recent project is called HighWaterLine. To quote from that project description: HighWaterLine was a public artwork on the New York city waterfront that created an immediate visual and local understanding of the affects of climate change. I marked the 10-feet above sea level line by drawing a blue chalk line and installing illuminated beacons in parks. The line marks the extent of increased flooding brought on by stronger and more frequent storms as a result of climate change.



Beyond really enjoying Eve's work, I am intrigued and even feel a little relieved to find that she not only has a presence on facebook, but maintains a blog, has several websites and even twitters (I really don't know what that is, but it seems very now). It occurred to me that it made sense for her to have this strong online presence since her work is all about engaging with a broad public, provoking dialogue, and acting as a catalyst for further actions- the sort of thing that the internets is perfect for (will we have to stop saying "internets" once W is out?). Here is one of her websites that I especially like: DIYPublicArt.

4 comments:

dorinalouise said...

"look on the bright side of life" that song just popped into my head. yeah we have our self-indulgent days . . but i love going on line and hooking up with people across the globe. right now i just hooked up with eve mosher and then kurt peschke's red ball and the guys in his video that gave me these quotes: "the red ball symbolizes nothing but nothing is everything is an ideal is an ideal to attract people to have their own minds to create. what did that mean? it means nothing and yet it means everything you see from nothing comes everything. everything is nothing and that's all i have to say and have a good day in this nothing world that is everything."

"why would you put a big red ball in the alleys? and all the truck drivers and delivery people are all just cursing because it's just messing their life up isn't that what art should do?"

nothing could be cooler! (except maybe everything) so thanks for publicly airing your thoughts today robyn!

Robyn said...

haha! I love those quotes! thanks for sharing them. I agree there are many good things to the internet, blogs, facebook, and all, but....

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velmalikevelvet said...

Seems like '09 is the year of Facebook in my world. I, too, have resisted 'til now, but I've been receiving invites by friends new to it for awhile now. I might just have to succumb.

Thanks for sharing the DIY art links; her work is intriguing.