This is a research and curation assignment.
Collect a series of images or digital artifacts from the internet centered around a particular theme, concept, aesthetic.
Create a website to present it to the public.
Your goal is to demonstrate your capacity as discoverer and researcher, to dig below what social media algorithms determine as relevant, to create new connections and readings among the overabundance of digital culture, to find beauty and meaning in everyday practices that don’t belong to the realm of high art.
Requirements (they can all be negotiated):
The images/artifacts should belong to the digital age and be an expression of internet communities and culture.
Stay away from archives and from the analog era (anything before 1995 circa).
You cannot create your own images, nor modify the images you found.
The images shouldn’t be already works of art.
The collection should not already exist.
Come up with a title for the project.
You can add “wall text” to each image with credits, captions etc.
You should present at least 10 images/artifacts, ideally collecting more samples and doing a selection.
Student work samples
https://toaskistoremember.neocities.org/
https://karny.hotglue.me/?Poems/view
In the School Bathroom – statement
Scratch Compliments – statement
Deliverables
A curational statement / project statement
At least one page (1,800 characters with spaces) explaining, what the project is, the significance of these images or process, providing a context. What are these images? Why are they worth looking at? How did you select them?
This is one of the few writing assignments in this class, take it seriously.
A link to the projectÂ
Upload it somewhere so it can be easy accessed during critique. I’d prefer a public platform but your google drive is fine too if you don’t want it out there.
If the project is on a physical medium bring it in its actual form but also post good digital documentation of it (imagine putting it on your portfolio website).
We have about 7 minutes of crit time for each project. Be ready to present your project in max 3 minutes, then we’ll have a couple of questions and comments in class and as assignment you’ll be posting a comment on each of your classmates’ project.
Critique/evaluation questions
Does the collection shed light on a phenomenon, a community, a particular use of a technology that wasn’t already widely known? Did I learn anything new? Is the collection novel or is was it already existing in some form?
Is the presentation (format, medium, style, tone) appropriate for the content?
Is the curatorial statement clear and well written? Is there an angle, a goal that informs the curation? Is the title of the collection attention grabbing and non-generic?
Is there enough contextual information (wall text, captions, credits) to understand the collection and what the individual pieces are without an oral presentation?
Is the number of artifacts enough to back the argument or accomplish the curational goal? Do I leave the experience wishing for more?
Brainstorming
What is a topic you want to know more about?
What was the last time you fell into a rabbit hole on the internet?
What was the last time you almost fell into a rabbit hole but stopped because you didn’t have time to?
What is something that only you might know among your classmates?
What are some niche online communities that your *non-art* friends and relatives belong to?
What are some themes you have explored or want to explore in your art practice? Can you make a “mood board” of them?
Digital ethnography: go on a searchable platform like Youtube, Reddit, Tiktok, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia, wikihow, google image search, etc…
Search for a niche community, that you are not part of but that may relate to your answers above. Look for trends, memes, visual artifacts that surprise you.
Derive: open a Youtube video you recently watched. In the related video column choose the video that seems to be the most unrelated. Keep doing that until you stumble upon something interesting.
Desearch: Start from a random wikipedia article, click on the link that sounds potentially more interesting to you. Keep doing it until you end up on a page that excites you and that teaches you something new.