Doing It With Others (DIWO)
|| The noble venture by Furtherfield into establishing and investing in a common space that facilitates the sharing of ideas and execution of projects among artists has reaped the benefits of social practice in art.
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Before the proliferation of Open-Source culture, artists were seen as solitary creators who worked for their own gain, as in with the case of BritArt which led to a limited development in the field of art (mentioned in Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett “Do it With Others (DIWO): Participatory Media in the Furtherfield Neighborhood,” 2007):
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“It degraded and smothered artistic discourse by fueling a competitive and divisive attitude towards a shrinking public platform for their practice and the representation of their work.”
Furtherfield provided the opportunity for artists to start co-curation, such as in E-mail Art on Netbehaviour.
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This tore down the notion of the artists having a mandatory role of curating the entire viewing experience themselves, rather, it involved viewers to take ownership as well. In class, we explored the act of co-curation with our Collective Body project, where each of us could determine the order of photo upload in order to create the artwork in its entirety.
The exchange of ideas also led to technological experimentation as a new medium. Projects like Hole in Space by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, and Telegarden by Ken Goldberg make use of real time technology to allow people to interact across a Third Space, and also give up ownership of the result of the artwork to the audience, making their outcomes inclusive, unpredictable and ultimately genuinely interesting.
In class, we tried our hands at creating art via the Third Space in our Tele-stroll and Telematic Embrace projects. By negotiating and compromising, we are able to create a digital connection across screens.
With a conducive space for conversation, Furtherfield artists took the liberty to create projects like Plantoid by Okhaos that utilises the Blockchain system and Harvest by Julian Oliver that explored technology as a medium to get viewers from the public to be conscious about nature and rethink our relationship with technology. These are issues that our generation faces and such artworks allow the current generation to ‘connect with issues in their time’, which, as mentioned by Marc Garrett in his lecture, is one of the strongest virtues of being an artist.
Plantoid (2015) by Okahos
In conclusion, the concept of DIWO empowers artists with the capability to break the artist-viewer hierarchy, explore new mediums and better allow the public to connect with their work and the issues we face today.
Resources:
- Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett “Do it With Others (DIWO): Participatory Media in the Furtherfield Neighborhood,” 2007
- Furtherfield E-mail Art – http://archive.furtherfield.org/exhibitions/do-it-others-diwo-e-mail-art
- Marc Garrett’s online lecture on Furtherfield and DIWO
- Mail box showing Netbehaviour contributions to DIWO Email Art project 2007
https://www.furtherfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/diwo_mailbox.png - Plantoid: Plantoid (2015) by Okhaos
- Hole in Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyIJJr6Ldg8
- Harvest by Julian Olivers: https://julianoliver.com/output/harvest
- Plantoid: http://okhaos.com/plantoids/videos/plantoid-sydney.mp4
Very good research as I can see you assembled many of the project we have taken on this semester in Experimental Interaction. I was glad to see you begin your essay with the reference to art of the social practice, which is essential to our work this semester. What I would like to see you think about is how to tie together the many ideas and examples you have introduced. The main thread is DIWO (Do it with Others), which is the essential concept behind a more collaborative and participatory form of art making. Whereas you used DIWO in the title of your essay, it is even more important to define DIWO and explore how it functions through the examples you gave. Whereas you do talk about how the artist gives up ownership to the viewer, which is one important aspect of DIWO, again, you want to bring your ideas back to the central theme, and this theme can be better developed. That said, I can see that you have paid close attention to the work, and I was very impressed that you mentioned mail art and the Netbehaviour list and how it ties in with co-curation. So you have many of the important elements here, they just need to be brought together a little more cohesively.