ArtMeddler Blog

Its our first post….

This blog has been setup so that we can share with everyone what we’re up to in order to create the artmeddler final product. There’s a lot of history/thought behind what we’re up to which I’ll also be detailing.

I feel I need to write a little bit about the genesis of this project before we get into the processes we’re using to get something out the door.

Almost 18 months ago, Sophie and I were discussing some of her works and how sometimes, she’d like some external input to tell her when a work of art is ‘done’. This is no small irony when Sophie is a video editor herself (a role in which you frequently are the person saying ‘done’!). Eventually we ended up talking about how this could be done on the web with community involvement.

The early ideas revolved very specifically around a community ‘telling’ (i.e. voting) that they should stop working on their piece of art. However, what became apparent over time was that there isn’t really a space for showing works in progress online. Lots of people do it (mainly retrospectively) but there’s no structured place for the exploration of how something was created and for a community to input.

I, for one, love to see art deconstructed. I get excited when we get to see how an artist began sketching, or listening to Stevie Wonder’s drumming isolated from the original song.

Lots of ideas are floating around about how this is going to work, and where its future lies, so its an exciting time. In these early days of the project, we’ll be documenting some of the exercises we’re using to get the ball rolling.

Its interesting for me personally to have to make hard decisions about what to include and what not to: a few weeks ago I attended UXI Amsterdam, which was partly about the difficult strategic decisions you have to make when creating the user experience. To quote Brandon Schauer:

“Strategy is about saying no.”

A lot of what we’re up to is to strip things out at the moment, but hopefully, we’ll create a place for all of our ideas to grow with a community.

Signing off,

B