The Big Art Project

Under Scan, Raphael Lozano-Hemmer, Trafalgar Square, London. 21 Novemeber 2008

2008-11-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

I walked across the front of the National Gallery last night, and became one of many caught up and enchanted by Lozano-Hemmer's pavement 'magic-lantern show'. It seemed to fit the surrounding Christmas lights and the feeling of child-like enchantment I often get in the west end at this time of year (until I think about it all a bit more!).

After a while, surrounded by passing footfalls and flickering images, I realised that the installation is an even bigger box of tricks than it first appeared. The figures actually seem to respond. They beckon you or 'wake up' as you approach them, then retreat, retire, or go back to sleep as you walk away. The pre-recorded films react in various random ways, some sad or serious, some humorously, to sensors criss-crossing the concourse, creating a computerised grid. An image of this grid spectacularly zooms across the square every few minutes to drive the point home.

It's all clever stuff. It's all very spectacular. And as the high-tech equipment and security guards around the periphery remind me, it's all very expensive.

As well as playing with robotics, projections, phone links and sensors, Lozano-Hemmer also seems to enjoy playing with the idea of public surveillance. Setting up a network of surveillance, he allows us to have fun with it. Isn't this like getting into bed (and being tickled) by Orwell's Big Brother though? Surveillance, through play, becomes perhaps less threatening, but no less controlling and pervasive.

The artist wants to involve the viewer in the work and I've heard that the he quotes a couple of artists with similar concerns: The 17th century Spanish painter, Diego Velázquez, and that amazing painting Las Meninas, which positions you, the viewer, in the place of the subjects that the artist, Velasquez, depicts himself painting. As a more recent example, he quotes Tall Ships by Gary Hill. This is probably closer to Under Scan in its use of video and computer technology and involves the viewer in a similarly controlled intimacy with filmed images of other people. With three friends (two of them video artists), I made a special trip from London to Oxford to see Tall Ships, a multi-image, walk-through video installation, a few years ago. We were blown away – but quietly. Hill's minimal, finely-judged piece was moving rather than spectacular. As a result, it resonated more deeply. It avoided what we thought at the time, (as I am reminded now) was a major pitfall of some electronic and/or interactive work: that of looking rather more like an impressively-staged exhibit at a science museum and feeling rather less of an art experience – interactive or otherwise.

I first heard about Under Scan in Trafalgar Square on the radio. It has attracted the attention of the media and the artist speaks very well when interviewed about it. It's the kind of art that 'reports well'. It's popular, it is spectacular and I can't help thinking, is this media art, or art for the media (or maybe art for people so saturated by media messages that they really need an instantaneous, flickering, fast-moving "WOW!" to cut through it all and be engaged)?

– Maybe I'm just an old minimalist, but for me, perhaps less would have been not only more, but more focused.

Whatever it was, the installation at Trafalgar Square was fun. Like many others there, I was engaged. I stayed and explored the piece for quite a while. Interesting to see though, how many people got a kick out of stamping on the image of someone who was clearly not there to be offended or fight back. Perhaps in spite of our modern, sophisticated lifestyles and high-tech artworks, we are not so 'advanced' after all?

I've posted a couple of my favourites that I did kind of enjoy – in spite of my po-faced reservations!

Tower of Power - plug in now!

2008-11-15T01:52:00.000-08:00

(photo courtesy of Alastair Fyfe)

Artists are lighting up London's South Bank with 1200 wind-powered lights as part of a digital arts festival.

The Aeolian tower - which means moved by the wind - is a 15m steel structure located next to Waterloo Bridge.

The tower is covered with hundreds of tiny wind-powered LEDs. Each one made of a plastic turbine, controlling circuits and three red LEDs.

The designers aim to show how renewable energy can be used to power sustainable art and design.

The Aeolian Tower will be in place from 14 -16 November as part of the One Dot Zero - Adventure In Motion festival at the BFI Southbank in London.

Read more of Flora Graham's report on BBC News

Update: I went down to check out the Tower of Power on my way home from the England-Australia match at Twickenham today and it was mighty disappointing. Someone had pulled the plug or the wind was non-existent... whatever the problem is was on the dark side.

The Towers Fight Back

2008-08-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

It was good to see the Tinsley Cooling Towers in Sheffield fighting back this week-end and refusing to lie down.

Part of the second tower refuses to lie down. It was later demolished by bulldozers.

Despite the Big Art Project's committed support the passionate TowerLovers of Sheffield were unable to save their cool towers. Energy corporation EON, who own the site, have promised £0.5M to fund a public art work on the site. That's an identical amount to the estimated cost of making the towers safe.

Meanwhile, the passions around the twin towers remain anything but cool, as illustrated, by way of example, by The Sesquipedalist:

"Even though they’re the oldest standing example of hyperboloidal cooling towers in the UK and even though they were probably the largest of their kind when built in 1939, the cooling towers at Tinsley would be of considerably less interest if they were in a Lincolnshire field, or on the Northumberland coast. But they’re not. They’re a few metres from the M1, symbolising the transition from “The South” to “The North” (and back) to millions of motorists. I remember going to visit my grandparents in Sheffield in the ‘70s. Peering out of a brown Ford Cortina’s rear window, I knew we were “nearly there” when I saw at close quarters these Brobdingnangian salt and pepper pots. A matching pair no less, oozing iconicity from their concrete pours. The kind of imbued iconicity that’s been invested in by a shared memory over decades of proud “Made in Sheffield” tradition rather than blinging stainless steel meaninglessness, designed in Apathy and built in Elsewhere."
More...

Photo courtesy of Andy Coe

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

2008-04-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

Good to see the youth of Cardigan rising up. Reminds me of the good old days (words courtesy of Bob Dylan, named of course after Wales' own poet Dylan):

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

This comes from the august journal that is the Tivy-Side Advertiser:

"The Big Art project could be the best thing that's ever happened to Cardigan - that's the view of younger people in the town it was claimed this week.

After months of negative comments about the £600,000 project, younger people are now coming forward to voice their support.

This comes in the wake of warnings that the project will fail if it does not get the backing of the community.
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"Big Art is a fantastic idea and something that will bring tourists and customers into Cardigan," said 22-year-old Liz Greenhalgh, who will be taking over a town shop in the next few months.

"It's far better that the money is invested in our town rather than any other. I'm all for it - and so are a lot of young people."

Liz's views were backed up by artist Rowan O'Neill, 31, who wants to use Rafael Lozano Hemmer's floating buoys to create her own project."

Read more of the Youngsters love Big Art

Sheffield - the way people look at this city

2008-04-02T03:39:00.000-07:00

"We could have changed the way people look at this city. And they didn't let us." - here's a great account by Alexandra Topping from The Guardian of Toms Keeley & James' dogged campaign to transform industry into art.

" From the window of the Sheffield Supertram, Tom James watches despondently as the city's out-of-town shopping centre, Meadowhall, comes into view. Just beyond this mecca of consumerism, with its Disney-style dome and legions of parked cars, rises an altogether different landmark. The Tinsley cooling towers - bleak, elegant, real - are often the first and last thing people see as they enter and leave the city. But soon, like Sheffield's industrial golden age, they will be consigned to history, demolished to make way for a new power station. James reflects: "Imagine, when the towers are gone, Meadowhall will be the only thing you'll be able to see from the tram and the M1. How depressing."

Over the last three years, the 1940s towers have become symbolic of the battle for the city's soul - between those determined to create a 21st-century gleaming metropolis and those intent on preserving and celebrating some of the city's industrial heritage.

At the heart of that battle are Tom James and Tom Keeley, self-proclaimed "post-industrial city lovers" in their mid-20s. For two and a half years, they have been campaigning to have the redundant 76 metre-high towers, which stand just 17 metres from the motorway, transformed into a space for public art. "The idea was to transform the cooling towers into something amazing," Keeley says. "Our Angel of the North - something that would really make people think about Sheffield differently". "

Read on...

Choe Creation

2008-02-26T03:01:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting arrival in London and Newcastle (simultaneously) this week. Peripatetic (LA born) David Choe has a new show opening this Friday night at the Lazarides Galleries. Here's a sneak preview of the new work...

Picture courtesy David Choe and Lazarides Gallery
Copyright: David Choe 2008

Big Art Project: Burnley

2008-01-27T08:58:00.000-08:00

Stars of the UK arts scene, the art collective, Greyworld, has been selected to develop new art works for Burnley. Greyworld, is best known for The Source, created for the new London Stock Exchange and is currently developing a new installation next to London's Tate Modern Gallery for November 2007.

The Big Art Burnley team reflect on the past years' Big Art experience in their own video.

Visit the Big Art Burnley team's own website: www.bigartpro.co.uk for more information.

Art Department

2008-01-19T02:46:00.000-08:00

London's famous department store Selfridges is permanently turning three of the display windows of its Oxford Street headquarters into spaces to display upcoming artists. First to show their work in this new public art space is 23 year old Richard Sweeney from Huddersfield who works with paper sculptures.

Photos courtesy of Steeev and Richard Sweeney

Banksy: Caught In The Act And Unmasked

2007-12-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

Not hot off the press but I hadn't seen these pics before

Photo courtesy of Londonist

Shooting sculpture in the wild

2007-12-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

The Large Huts, by Christina Mackie. Photo by Morsal from Regent's Park community College

A few days ago I revisited the New Art Centre in East Winterslow, Wiltshire. I’d met with Lucy Salisbury the Education Co-ordinator back in September and since then we have been discussing running a series of Big Art Mob workshops at the centre with school students.

This was the first of the series and I expected a few local kids – but no, they had bussed them in all the way from Southampton to spend a day out of school devoted to art! After introductions from Lucy and myself, the group of girls from Regent’s Park Community College, the Head of Art and one of the Deputy Headteachers were treated to a tour of the grounds at Roche Court by staff and a volunteer. During their tour, they photographed many of the fantastic works of art on view and we posted them to the Big Art Mob site with the students' comments.

Jonty Archibald, Deputy Headteacher at Regent’s Park and an ex Art and Design Chief Examiner and senior art moderator was very keen on the whole Big Art Mob concept and says:

'Modern technologies like mobile phones should be encouraged to enable students record and develop ideas. Current mobile phones have high quality resolution for both still and moving images. Modern technologies should be used alongside other forms of recording: drawing, painting, photography, sculpture and writing.’

It seems that this can even fit in well with GCSE work. He continues,

‘There are clear assessment objectives used in marking art work, and images created using modern technogies can be assessed against typical examination objectives like 'Record observations, experiences and ideas that are appropriate to intentions' (from Edexcel GSCE assessment objectives).'

It was great to hear someone in the teaching profession being so positive about the kind of thing Big Art Mob can offer and I really enjoyed my visit. The sculpture on show in the grounds was well presented and nicely complemented by a stunning exhibition of contemporary photographic work in the gallery. I'm pretty sure that both the New Art Centre staff and the school group enjoyed themselves too. We certainly got some great images onto the site. The students really thought about what they were photographing and how best to compose their images. Fortunately the tour of the grounds and the Moblogging were completed before the heavens opened and Wiltshire got a good soaking! See more at the Regent’s Park Community College group page.

Nick Pearson
Big Art Project website manager

Camden Moblog Mob

2007-11-06T04:19:00.000-08:00

‘Could you give this guy Simon a ring?’ I was asked by Adam Gee, Commissioning Editor for Channel 4’s New Media department and responsible for commissioning this website. ‘He may not know what you’re talking about’, he added. Well, so far that made two of us.

I found out from Adam that Simon Rowe is a photographer who was about to start running a weekly mobile phone and digital camera workshop at London’s Roundhouse. It was true, this sounded like an ideal opportunity to link up and Adam had been alerted to it after a meeting with someone at the Roundhouse.

I called Simon on his mobile and true enough, he hadn’t yet been told that I may be contacting him, so we had a long chat about what each of us was doing.

I went to see Simon and his group of North London teenagers (all boys) in one of the studio rooms at the newly refurbished Roundhouse, looking better than I’d ever seen it over its many uses and temporary reincarnations in recent years. When I was introduced as coming ‘from Channel 4’, the immediate reaction was ‘Can you get me a job?’ I had to tell them I was freelance and had no sway over personnel matters at the Channel. That done, I introduced the Big Art website in general and the Big Art Mob pages in particular. Something I’ve noticed before whilst talking to groups of this age group, all sat in front of computers linked to the internet, happened again and by the time I’d gone through the site on the projected screen at the front of the room they had all found it themselves and some had already signed up!

Armed with their own phones and cheap digital cameras supplied by the Roundhouse they were ready to go out and capture images of the art in their area and add them to the Big Art map when I left.

Watch out for postings from Camden on the Big Art Mob pages at www.channel4.com/bigartmob

Nick Pearson
Big Art Project website manager

B of the Buck

2007-10-25T07:50:00.001-07:00

Public Art in the news today - both the big Banksy sale at Bonhams in Knightsbridge last night (£565,000 in sales, originally estimated to go for £300,000) and noise around B of the Bang in Manchester:

"The makers of the controversial B Of The Bang sculpture are being sued for £2 million because it is unsafe.

The designers of the 56m (184ft) Manchester landmark have been accused of negligence by council bosses after it failed to meet safety standards. They have also been told that major work is needed to finish the £1.4 million structure, which remains fenced off four years after it was due to be completed.

The action against the design team – including artist Thomas Heatherwick – comes after a catalogue of mishaps.

The cost of B Of The Bang rocketed from £750,000 to £1.4 million because the initial quote did not include installation.
To make matters worse, its official opening was delayed by 18 months and a spike fell off causing the closure of a nearby road. The sculpture is still sealed off." [more]

see more at today's Metro online

Skin Up

2007-10-18T05:55:00.000-07:00

The blue wrap came off. The Big 4 saw the light of day. A real buzz was released into the air around the Channel. Big Art, bold creativity.

The Minister for Culture Margaret Hodge unveiled the 40’ high figure four based on those much admired idents on Channel 4. On the approach to the Channel’s Richard Rogers designed headquarters in Horseferry Road (London SW1), the 4 stands three and a bit storeys high. The structure forms a figure four only from a particular angle, just like the on-screen idents masterminded by Brett Foraker. The concept of the TV graphics is that the four only comes together for a fleeting moment. So, strictly speaking, the Big 4 should be viewed walking by, no stopping.

The structure has been skinned by leading British photographer Nick Knight. He is the first of four artists to tackle the task over the coming year. His approach: skin the figure with images of people’s hearts – from the outside. White skin, black skin, brown skin, the patchwork that is modern Britain. Stand in the middle and you can hear the beating of a heart.

In three months it will be the turn of Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui, and then the marvellous Mark Titchner. The last skinner will be the winner of a competition run in conjunction with the Saatchi Gallery.

The Big 4 celebrates 25 years of Channel 4 Arts and the launch of the Big Art Project (for anyone who's just landed here: it's an innovative, bold cross-platform initiative involving a 4 part documentary series from Carbon Media, the commissioning of 6 new works of public art across the UK – from Beckton to the Isle of Mull, and the first comprehensive map of public art in the UK in the form of the Big Art Mob – a mobile blogging initiative where people photograph public art they know and love and send it from their camera phone into a visually led blog and a Google Map mash-up, the Big Art Map).

Today I had a meeting at the Public Monuments & Sculpture Association with its Chief Executive Jo Darke to make sure the Big Art Mob complements what the Courtauld Institute-based research project has been doing. We (Jo, me and sculptor Nick Pearson) had a fabulous chat in a tranquil corner of Somerset House animated with passion for public art. What I so love about this interactive commission is it’s so adaptable to partnership initiatives. From arts & disability groups to the Arts Council, from Kew Gardens to specific creations like Aluna, Big Art Mob is an easy, accessible way to record, explore, enjoy, engage with public art in all its forms.

The day before the unveiling Montreal-based Mexican-Canadian multimedia artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer revealed his idea for the Big Art piece in Cardigan on the Welsh coast to the local community. Home of the first Eisteddfod, hub of the oral tradition; point of departure for America in the 19th and early 20th centuries; Lozano-Hemmer has really got under the skin of the place and distilled in a work based on buoys floating just off the river bank, collecting and projecting back the voices of the local population and interested people beyond.

There were 2,800 job cuts being discussed at the BBC yesterday. That’s over three times the size of Channel 4. What the Channel lacks in bulk, it makes up for in size of ambition, degree of creativity and scale of idea. Sometimes it’s good to be the underdog. Between Saturday’s unbelievable England rugby match in Paris and yesterday’s unveiling of the Big 4, I’m totally c!h!a!r!g!e!d.

Prepare for Landing

2007-09-22T01:35:00.000-07:00

First there were the big squares of plywood, bordered with yellow and black tape. Then, yesterday afternoon, they arrived in their yellow helmets. Three foot long drill bits. The mysterious squares pulled up to reveal the concrete secrets below...

The squad of art-builders were preparing the way for the Big 4. Is it landing this weekend? A closely guarded secret. Even those in the know don't really know. Rumour has it Westminster Council don't want the work going on on the weekend - some major engineering going on on the premises with cranes and steel girders and 800 staff coming&going makes much more sense.

So will the Big 4 be there when we arrive on Monday? Watch this space and I'll watch that one for you...

Big Art Tour

2007-09-13T05:20:00.000-07:00

Channel 4's Big 4 goes up outside the Horseferry Road building in London’s St James’s Park this month and my ‘Big Art Tour’ starts in earnest, introducing the Big Art Mob to people up and down the UK, via schools, colleges and arts centres.

There have been a couple of ad-hoc, impromptu demos too. By chance, I bumped into a bunch of graffiti artists in Yorkshire (who prefer to remain anonymous!). They were curious about my interest in what they were doing and wound up photographing themselves in action and posting to the site

Knowsley Community College in Merseyside now has a number of keen mobloggers after taking away Big Art Mob postcards I distributed after a talk at their college.

Opt-in-for-Art (http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/exh_gfx_en/ART46722.html) a young people’s art project, based at the busy Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh now has its own Big art Mob group and the Gallery’s Johnny Gailey will be running Moblog workshops in October, based on discussions we have had by e-mail and when I visited the gallery a couple of weeks ago.

Last week I visited Halifax and the Dean Clough Mills (http://www.deanclough.com/) business community and arts centre. I was given a whistle-stop tour, by Arts Director, Vic Allen. The tour still took a good hour – but it was a very good and very entertaining hour. This impressive, responsibly renovated 19th century carpet mill is huge – it’s more like a village than a business park and the arts that are such a feature of Dean Clough (galleries, artists’ studios, theatre and resident perfomance group, I.O.U.) give it a vibrancy and sense of community not normally seen in more conventional business parks. We are planning a two-day workshop at the mills in the coming weeks to encourage the people of Halifax to look again at public art in their area and post to the Big Art Mob.

The next day, my visit to my home county of Yorkshire took me to Yorkshire Sculpture Park (http://www.ysp.co.uk/) in the beautiful countryside setting of Bretton Hall, near Wakefield (great place for a day out!). The park’s events Co-ordinator, Anthony ‘Shep’ Shepherd and I are planning a series of Moblog-related events, based around sculptures (by Henry Moore, Andy Goldsworthy, Anthony Caro, Antony Gormley, James Turrell etc) on display in the spacious grounds set in 500 acres of rolling landscape.

Moving back south, and west of London (where I live), I visited the New Art Centre (http://www.sculpture.uk.com) this week at Roche Court, East Winterslow in Wiltshire to meet with the Education Co-ordinator, Lucy Salisbury. Another country park setting, but this time a private concern, open to the public to view sculpture by artists the centre represents and exhibits – from Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore to Anya Gallaccio and Gavin Turk – in the grounds and gallery. The New Art Centre has an active education programme with over 50 schools as members. I hope to get involved with schools in the area there later this year and early in 2008 to introduce the Big Art Mob to Wiltshire schoolkids.

Watch this space for reports on the workshops and more news.

Nick Pearson
Big Art Project website manager

Big interest in big art among little people

2007-06-25T04:44:00.000-07:00

Went in to Our Lady of Muswell school in North London on Friday to talk to 60 year 5 students (c.10 yrs old) about the Big Art Project [I go once a year to talk about whatever I am working on at Channel 4 at the time - last year was My New Home and the year before was the Big Roman Dig].

I showed them 3 of the Watch This Space Three Minute Wonder short films broadcast a few weeks ago on Channel 4 - the ones featuring the sites in St Helens, Sheffield and Burnley - and we spent a few minutes getting members of the two classes to show where all the sites were on a map (Burnley was the one that really tested them).

No-one in the two classes knew what a 'colliery' was and they were fascinated by the insight into the life of a coal miner. They also found the poem voice-over of interest (read by Johnny Vegas) as they'd been studying writing poetry this term in Literacy lessons.

On a show of hands, of the 60 ten year olds only 3 found the Sheffield cooling towers attractive (about a dozen of them had see the towers in real life). They did however find the notion of a landmark compelling and highlighted the London Eye as one they particularly associated with their city.

The Burnley film struck a chord with them because of the youth of the contributors. They liked the idea of improving your environment through art.

The films worked really well in the classroom as a springboard for conversation enabling us to cover a lot of ground in an hour and a bit - from history (e.g. the great public art project of the First World War memorials across the UK) to geography (e.g. so where exactly is the Isle of Mull?) to technology (how to use the Big Art Mob mobile blogging dimension of the project) to PHSE (e.g. the transvestite contributor in the Sheffield film).

Photo above courtesy of UKphoto.tv on Big Art Mob

Public art is in the news and I'm on the move!

2007-05-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

When I’m not managing websites like this one for Channel 4, I am working on sculpture in my own studio, so the Big Art Project neatly ties up these two sides of my life!

Maybe I’m noticing it more now, but public art really seems to be in the news. . .

The 100 cast-iron figures staring out to sea – Another Place by Antony Gormley – now enjoy permanent residence on Crosby beach, Merseyside, after public pressure persuaded Sefton council to keep them. More figures have just been installed on London rooftops, particularly around the Hayward Gallery where an exhibition of Gormley’s work runs until August

Elisabeth Frink, an equally féted artist of an earlier generation, has hit the headlines as property developers, The Avon Group, plan to remove her bronzes, Desert Quartet from the Montague Centre in Worthing. The 20th Century Society (www.c20society.org.uk) and pmsa (www.pmsa.org.uk) object, saying that permanent inclusion of Frink’s sculpture was a condition of the original planning permission. Can any Big Art Mobloggers in the Worthing area let us all see what the fuss is about?

Less well known, but well represented here on the Big Art Mob are the artists in Situation Leeds (www.situationleeds.org.uk) a festival of artists’ interventions around the city. Down south and maybe not yet known at all, are those applying for inclusion in Kensington and Chelsea’s planned public art trail (contact: arts@rbkc.gov.uk). Several commissions are being offered in Wales, where major public artworks are being proposed for the 'St David's 2' development in Cardiff (www.stdavids2.com).

There's even been a call from a consortium including Eurostar for an ‘Angel of the South’ for Ebbsfleet, Kent, in time for the London Olympics. This suggests a question to me: with the Olympics looming, where will all the money (from a government dept. with responsibility for both art and sport) be going in the next few years? (maybe this is one for a discussion on the Big Art Forum ?)

Now the Big Art Mob is up and running, I’ll be traveling around the country, visiting colleges, arts centres etc., setting up moblog workshops. We’ll attempt to fill any gaps in the ever-expanding Big Art Map – anyone want to invite me to their own arts centre or school? We’ll see what we can do!

Please watch this space for further reports and keep checking the website for updates on the developing artworks in the seven communities Channel 4’s Big Art Project is filming in the run up to the series.

Nick Pearson
Big Art Project website manager

Big Art Map

2007-05-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

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

Onwards and Upwards!

2007-05-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

April 2007 and the start of the home strait for The Big Art Project, yet there’s still a long way to go… Having worked in the industry for nearly 5 years, I can honestly say that this is one of the most exciting, fulfilling – and yet at times exasperating projects I have ever worked on – but the thought of standing here in 5, 10 or even 20 years time and perhaps being able to travel to St.Helens and see a sculpture still standing on the hillside; to visit the Waterworks Park in Belfast and see people wandering through a sea of artworks started by The Big Art Project; making my first visit to Mull and Cardigan to see what Art has created on the Island or the Quayside; standing on the Olympic Greenway in Newham looking up and seeing what the Alp has become; Driving up the M1 and (hopefully) seeing the Towers still standing in all their cultural glory.

Personally, I find the Burnley project the most exciting – there is something amazing about watching a group of Young People developing in front of us, and becoming more articulate about their wants and desires by the day. They truly embrace the spirit of the project – finding Art a fun and exciting way of bringing their community together. I’m not sure whether it’s childhood innocence or not – but I think there, more than on any of the other sites, they believe they are part of something big and amazing in the future… (I could be wrong – and I’ll allow the other nominees, and people in the office to come back at me on that one!!)

Sitting in the production office for the most part, I think that people out on the sites can forget that we’re also living the rollercoaster ride with them (except 7 times over!!) There are days when the team sit at our desks buzzing, because funding is falling into place and we’re hearing positive feedback from the sites with news of Artist visits, community projects getting off the ground, and some of the proposals feeling like they are about to become a reality.

When I joined the project 9 months ago and there was little money on the table it was hard to believe that we would actually make it to the point where we are now, standing on the brink of something amazing. That said, it’s not all fun and sunshine, and we sit here on other days feeling the frustrations and concerns from nominators on the site, when it seems like all of our efforts are running into a brick wall. Fortunately, the team behind this project are exceptional – and when one person is feeling project fatigue, there is someone else there to pick them up – and I hope that over the next year, that is something that will continue not just in our production office but out on the sites too. As much as I’d like to think that the next year will just be an exciting upwards surge towards the unveiling of each project, I have a feeling that there will be a few bumps along the way!

Over the last few weeks, with the transmission of ‘Watch This Space’ – the series of 3 Minute Wonders that broadcast on Channel 4, I began for the first time to believe in this project becoming real. Watching them for the first time made the hairs on my neck stand on end – it was a shame that we couldn’t produce one for every site. However, the response I have received from friends, family, colleagues and members of the general public is one of overwhelming support for the project. People are gaining interest in how the sites were chosen, what is going to happen, and how, and by who – and the one thing that for me makes this project, is how each one of us can bring something to the table – no matter how small. This project won’t happen if everyone sits back and waits… we have to make it happen….

It’s a challenge that I think we can rise to… talking of which – I should get back to work!

Jo Taylor
Jnr Production Manager - Carbon Media

Its Big

2006-05-31T01:51:00.000-07:00

The early morning ferry from Oban to Mull is a wonderful experience. It is hard not to be entranced watching castles and hillsides amble out of the half-light as the sky softens from damson purple into a crisp fresh blue. I have travelled quite a bit outside Britain, but I barely know my own country. Visiting the Western Scottish coast and the Island of Mull for the first time was a revelation. On the way to Mull, The Big Art Project crew stayed one night in a hotel in Oban on the mainland. I couldn’t sleep and I got up and dressed at 4am and went out walking. I climbed up above the fishing town where an unfinished Victorian amphitheatre lays like a beached granite oil tank on the hillside. I sat on a low wall. It was a good vantage point. Even though it was still dark you could still feel the immenseness of the sky and I could just make out a few boats defining the horizon. It is the first time that I have perceived the curvature of the earth. It did make me think what a different proposal art is in that sort of environment from the cities and towns that I know.

The Mull forest that has been put forward for the Big Art Project is the sort of landscape that makes hardened city-lovers like me question their lifestyle. The site is a commercial coniferous forest that in winter hides an undulating landscape and complex archaeology with a feathery exoskeleton of fine fawn-coloured branches. Entering is like entering a cathedral; perfectly regimented rows of trees form cavernous semi-lit spaces, criss-crossed by sun and shadows that lead the eye in every direction, but ultimately upward. The space is glorious and the art possibilities are amazing.

Mull was just one proposal of the 1500 that were considered. As a panellist I travelled thousand of miles from the Isle of Mull to the Isle of Wight, from Burnley to Belfast looking at a selection of short-listed sites. One of the things I found fascinating was how varied and diverse we are as a nation – Each proposal seemed to offer up a completely unique set of optionsthat reflect some of the complexities of contemporary Britain. The Big Art Project has a wonderful opportunity to reflect and celebrate those differences; perhaps in some areas to build bridges and engage broadly in whilst others to offer platform for particularity.

Probably the last time there was an equivalently major British public art intervention was 1945, in the aftermath of the war, when hundreds of memorial sculptures were placed in our town squares and churches. There is very little that is similar between then and now. But one might argue that today we are under-going a similarly profound shift in our sociology. In the aftermath of the war, with the empire fading we discovered a new kind of Britishness that you can still see in those memorials. Those post 1945 memorials depict a war won in the ranks. They were not, for the most part, sculptures of other people, they were images of you and I – normal, everyday people made heroes by circumstance. Today our sense of identity is being redefined once more by a shifting dialectic of regional and international issues, by a new equation of personal and the global agenda. For many of us national issues seem to have been supplanted by pan-national agendas and macro ecological concerns. Even in the quietness of the forest of Mull, the broader issues of global warming, deforestation and international-farming seemed to shout out in the silence. Perhaps today through the Big Art Project we have another national opportunity to formally mark a renegotiation of our relationship with each other. Perhaps some of the public art that we leave may become part of the emotional archaeology of the future defining some of the complexities of our time for our children.

I think this could be the beginning of a wonderful 18 month journey, during which, I will try to touch base with you as we watch six different communities develop their Big Art Projects. If you have questions or wish to raise points, do not hesitate to let us know.

Gus Casely-Hayford, Big Art Project panelist

Welcome

2006-05-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Channel 4's Big Art Project blog.