Big Art Map
This afternoon I've been trolling around Holborn and Covent Garden snapping public art on my mobile phone, dragging two remarkably patient children behind me. Like the people in the pic above (taken on said phone down in Brighton a couple of weeks ago), you may well ask "Why?".
A few days ago we launched the Big Art Mob. Part of this Big Art Project website, it enables people interested in public art, indeed art and culture generally, to send photos and other media (text, video, audio) directly from their mobiles to a picture-led 'blog' where they instantly appear. There they can be 'tagged' (labeled with key words) by both the contributor and subsequent viewers to make the submitted images easier to find and connect.
But in the immortal words of the Cat in the Hat, "But that is not all. Oh no, that is not all!" On Friday the Big Art Map was launched. This makes it possible to automatically place those submitted images on an interactive map which has ambitions to be the most comprehensive map of UK public art ever created. And what's most exciting is that it's being created by the UK public.
Both the Big Art Mob and its Big Art Map dimension were commissioned by me at Channel 4 (where I am the New Media Commissioner for Factual programmes like the Big Art Project) from a great emerging mobile technology business called Moblog UK. My main contact there is Alfie Dennen who, among other achievements, set up the We Are Not Afraid website in the wake of the 7/7 bombings. The collaboration has been great fun with everyone really committed and I'm delighted to have the work out in the public arena (albeit in Beta form for now).
You can see it at: www.bigartmob.com and easy instructions are there for how to have a go yourself. It's simply a question of taking a pic and sending it from your phone to a specific number. So moving on from the Cat in the Hat to Green Eggs and Ham, and slightly adapting the equally immortal words of Sam I Am to the activity of 'moblogging': "Try it! Try it! And you may [like it]. Try it and you may, I say."
Adam Gee
New Media Commissioner, Channel 4
Labels: dr seuss, interactive, map, photos
posted by ArkAngel @ 5:35 PM
2 Comments:
Adam,
I write a blog on new public art internationally. I have been following the Mob Blog. It can't be failing given the popularity of public art on Flickr, etc. I don't understand what is happening. I can't follow the website. Please write me through my blog at www dot artsjournal dot com / aestheticgrounds. Please I want to understand. Thanks.
Hi Glenn
Good to hear from you. I think when you write "It can't be failing" you mean 'it can't fail'(but please do clarify if i haven't understood). So far it's all looking pretty healthy. The Big Art Mob website is alive & kicking at www.bigartmob.com and after the first few days there are 30 pages of public artworks which have been posted to the site from across the UK by a diverse range of art-lovers.
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