1stfans Twitter Art Feed Artist for July 2010: Brian Piana
July's Twitter Art Feed artist is Brian Piana, who, in his own words, creates works "
from the Internet, for the Internet," several of which used Twitter as their base. While Brian often uses Twitter as a
source for his works, one project called
Tweeting Colors is particularly unique in that it puts control of the work into the hands of the public rather than his own. To elaborate,
Tweeting Colors is a web page that displays vertical bars of varying color and width, but each of these bars is determined by the tweets of various unknown Twitter users. In order to add a bar, one's tweet has to include
a few specific elements that designate the bar's size and color. The Web page itself auto-refreshes a few times per minute, so that new bars are added from the left to create an ever-changing online visual.
If some of this is sounding familiar to 1stfans, you may be aware that
Tweeting Colors is not only part of the
Rhizome ArtBase, but it also played a part in
ArtDialogue: conversations in images, January's Twitter Art Feed project by
Nina Meledandri. Nina's work encouraged online conversations through the use of images, in response to various themes. When Nina introduced the theme of "Home," some 1stfans deviated from using a straight image, and instead,
employed Tweeting Colors to create a group portrait of the colors found in their homes.
Because
Tweeting Colors is determined by people's individual tweets, it wholly relies on the personal involvement and collaboration of a variety of people to maintain and manipulate the work. Much like Nina's project, it is this collaborative nature that made Brian's project so appealing to Shelley and me for the Twitter Art Feed. For the first time, Brian is going to customize
Tweeting Colors and create a separate Web page for our followers. The private link to
1stfans Tweeting Colors will be announced within the Feed tomorrow, where you can then follow the simple instructions and add color bars of your liking. In the beginning, 1stfans are encouraged to play freely with the work, and as the month goes on, Brian will announce different themes and introduce new color palettes to the mix to encourage your participation. One thing 1stfans may notice when they first access
1stfans Tweeting Colors, is that it includes the Brooklyn Museum's eight signature colors, all of which happen to be used in our multi-colored 1stfans logo (as vertical color bars, no less!).
See why this is a perfect match?
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1stfans Twitter Art Feed Artist for June 2010: Mike Monteiro
June's 1stfans artist is Mike Monteiro, an artist whose work we discovered through our friends at
20x200.com. We were initially attracted to Mike's work because of his strong use of text: his striking black and white paintings illustrate maxims which are sometimes sarcastic, sometimes poignant, and often just really funny. For me, these bold captions express awkward or uncomfortable truths that I'd find difficult to confess myself (at least, out loud anyway), and seem to expose private thoughts to the public sphere.
The upfront nature of this work, however, provides an interesting contrast to the fact that Mike also likes to tells stories. When we approached him about participating in the Twitter Art Feed, Mike explained that he's always been amused by how much credibility Twitter has a source of information and being the satirist that he is, he wanted to play on that idea. I don't want to reveal too much about what Mike is going to do—Shelley and I think it will be a lot more fun to let 1stfans figure out his project through the progression of his tweets—but I can say that it's going to be focused on Museum and it will definitely keep you guessing. I've been amazed by the variety of ways in which Twitter has been used as a medium so far, and it will be interesting to see how Mike experiments with this medium while giving 1stfans a completely new way to engage with his work.
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