Blowfly has seemingly saved his home with IndieGoGo and some numb-nutz named Zack Brown conned 50 grand for "potato salad." Crowd-sourcing can be a powerful tool. From filmmakers to musicians, the possibilities are endless -- even more so when a pair of local artists utilize the basic concept of it for an installation this month during DWNTWN Art Days, which celebrates the way our town has changed and continues to evolve.
Artists and frequent collaborators (read: artistic instigators) Barron Sherer and Kevin Arrow have taken the concept and translated it into a locally-sourced photo project using Instagram and hashtags as the unifying front for the creation of the installation that will stream at the Miami Center for Architecture & Design from the September 19 through September 28.
The end result should be a compilation video on YouTube that won't make you cringe and/or wince in pain. The best part of the project is that its relative success hinges on the community's participation. Here's where you, the smart phone-wielding public, comes into play.
See also: DWNTWN Art Days: Fringe Projects' Public Installations and Frost's New Maker Space
The guidelines for participating in this Amanda Sanfilippo curated Fringe Projects commission are very simple: Upload or take a photograph within a one-mile radius of the Alfred I. Dupont building with the Instagram app and use the hashtag #DDAFF2014. This photo can be a street view or of another downtown Miami landmark, but it should display a sense of the "changing cityscape and create an instant historical archive."
In other words, the next time you're in the vicinity of 100 NE 1 Ave., whip out the old cell phone and snap a pic. You don't have to be an artist or think artistically to become involved. A sense of archiving might be the only real pointer you'll need. What catches your eye in that specific area? Is it the way a shadow is broken by light? Is it because that shadow never existed on that spot 30 years ago at that same moment of the day? Has the skyline become congested? Have the streets gotten meaner? Nicer? How has downtown changed? How has it remained he same?
See also: Kevin Arrow and Barron Sherer Revive Vintage Sci-Fi at the Museum of Science
Surely your snapshot will be different from the next person's; but all snapshots will be valid because as much as downtown Miami has changed over the years, so have our perceptions and attitudes towards this section of the city. You will not be sent a bite of potato salad for your participation; you will not be "thanked" on some website. Your photo will sync with the gestalt spirit of the project -- this is a living, albeit digital, archive. And the more you snap the better.
Sherer and Arrow will continue to instigate and promote the project through social media platforms focusing on the methodology of arrangement employed by archivists, historians and curators. Once the installation goes live, they will be updating the photo-stream projection daily.
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