"The Social Artwork" is an experiment:

Users can propose projects and collaboratively work on them (or leave it open for others to work on it). In this way a performance piece for instance could be shown all over the world in various versions within a very short amount of time.

Therefor structure of this website is as simple as possible:

*No Rating

Voting and ranking functions, such as known from most online portals are consequently avoided. It is not about having the best or the most popular idea, it's about developing thoughts.

*No User Profiles

Against the compulsion to self portrayal and personality cult (particularly significant in the art scene ;-), users can only use pseudonyms and not give out any personal data. It is not about the one who has an idea, it is about fruitful discussions with others - regardless of someone's gender, age or social status.

The focus is not on people, it's on the content, the project ideas.

*Access for Anyone

The whole network is accessable for anyone, with or without registration. Furthermore any uploaded idea can be realized by anyone, at any time, anywhere. The uploader relinquishes copy rights as well as control over the further development of the project to the crowds.

*Discuss it!

In return open discussions might intensify an artpiece. Don't just do it, discuss! :-)

*Gains and Losses

By free copying, it can be spread in a much vaster than the original author's range of influence would have allowed it.

Please do not hesitate using and realizing one of the ideas posted here if you're into it. Ask yourself if you really need it to be "only yours", or if anything even could be "only yours". It's not about your image. It's about art.

Important:

If you realize any project idea you found on this website, please add the URL "www.socialartwork.org" to the credits of the piece and make clear, that it is developed by a network of artists.

Everything is a Remix Part 4 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

In the digital age, in cognitive capitalism, when information, knowledge and ideas are the most valuable commodity, creative people are always fighting for their copy rights and the seemingly related individuality. The assumed novelty often turns out to be just another copy&paste work. More or less unconsiously we process the appropriated material, without being able to deliberate its origins in depth. We drift through the assoziative jungle of networks and searchengines. And although we obviously are being bombed by targeted advertising all the time, we still have the illusion to control the machine: Who is the administrator? Who has access? Who knows the password? Who can read, comment, modify, download? We have it all under control and last but not least we get satisfied by all the "like"-clicks on Facebook or the raising popularity of our Youtube channels. In the lonely space between screen and keyboard, connected to the whole world, we are looking for recognition.

Is the internet a digital Panopticon, where inmates whatch and discipline each other? Or is it the democratic medium, giving a voice to anyone, even facilitating a non-hierarchical discourse? What kind of system could encourage the individual to flower out?

THE ART OF DEMOCRACY

If the medium is the message, an artist of course has to develop the medium as well as the content. If art aims at influencing societal processes, it is essential to reconsider the artistic methods and processes and experiment on them. The internet is not only a medium enabling anyone to be producer and reciepient. It is also a modifiable system - everyone of us can shape and develop the medium itself.

BEING FAMOUS - WHY NOT?

The Social Artwork as an online experiment opens up great opportunities for all artists - if we are ready to freely tell our own thoughts and not too proud to accomplish the ideas of others. This project has the goal to radically overcome the enforced inimitability of a "lonely geniuos" and to constitute art projects that are coined by the diversity of many.

Now it's your turn :-)