[spectre] 6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME THE UK BETA TEST | NOVEMBER 22, 2014

[Domenico Quaranta]

6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME
THE UK BETA TEST | NOVEMBER 22, 2014

Contact: gabrielle at andfestival.org.uk 
Hashtag: #6pmuk
Participants: Furtherfield, London; Bloc Projects, Sheffield; Carroll / Fletcher, London; Jessy Darling / Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge;Enclave, London; FACT, Liverpool; Federation House, Manchester; Platform Arts Belfast, Belfast; PS2 - Paragon Studios, Belfast;Seventeen, London
Website: http://6pmyourlocaltime.com/

VISITING INFORMATION: http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery/visit
DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE: http://furtherfield.org/gallery-files/6PM-pr.pdf

6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME (6PM YLT) is a networked, distributed, one night contemporary art event, which takes place simultaneously in different locations, coordinated from one central venue, and documented online via a web application.

Furtherfield is hosting the first UK event, chosen for its history of critical engagement with networked culture. Including a few, selected participants, the event will work as a beta test for the web platform and for the organizing body that will launch, on July 22, a massive 6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME event, distributed all over Europe.

At 5.30 pm, Domenico Quaranta and Fabio Paris from Link Art Center will talk through their ambitions and inspiration for the project. For the duration of the event, participating venues and their audiences across the UK will be testing the platform by sharing documentation images and videos of their events under the same hashtag, #6pmuk. The audience at Furtherfield will be able to enjoy the live feed from all the locations involved, and to discuss the project with us.

Artists, technologists, network thinkers and makers are invited to join us to learn more about the conceptual framework for 6PM YLT and talk through how it can evolve, in anticipation of its European launch in July. Food and drinks will be available!

6PM YLT is a format conceived by the Link Art Center and developed in collaboration with Abandon Normal Devices (AND) and Gummy Industries.

BACKGROUND AND FURTHER INFORMATION
6 PM YOUR LOCAL TIME (6PM YLT) is a networked, distributed, one night contemporary art event taking place simultaneously in different locations, coordinated from one central venue and documented online via a web application. The locations (institutions, non-profit spaces, commercial galleries, artist’s studios) will address their local audience and, through the dedicated web platform, a global audience. While visiting your local 6PM YLT event(s) will allow you to experience a single portion first hand, the only way to get the whole picture will be to access its online documentation: all exhibits will be documented and shared in real time by organizers and audience on the dedicated web platform, thanks to a web application aggregating content from different social platforms.

The lead partner will coordinate the event from one central venue, and will put on display the event itself, screening the live feed from all the locations involved, and eventually making additional documentation available in different ways, ie. arranging video conferences with specific venues, or printing out images in real time and displaying them as a wall installation.

An Open Format
After the launch event, 6PM YLT will become an open format available for anyone to utilise. The lead partners will maintain the platform and support the coordination of events all around the world.

Conceptual Framework
Today, art is mostly experienced through its documentation. Even if globalization made it easier and cheaper to organize exhibitions, ship artworks, invite artists and move audiences to any part of the world, the excess of cultural activity all around the world makes it impossible to be everywhere at the same time. Bits are still faster and cheaper than atoms, and we can enjoy them more comfortably on different devices. The border between first hand and second hand experience, reality and media documentation becomes increasingly blurred, with a profound impact on the way art is produced and documented.

How does it work?
Almost every art-addict is now using social networks like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to take photographs during art exhibitions and to share them with their contacts. The pictures already have some meta-data that we could use to trace them and to collect them: #hashtags, captions, geographical data, publishing date. By suggesting the use of a given #hashtag to all the organizers and audience participants, we can collect and show all this documentation on a dedicated web platform. Our software will automatically collect all the pictures and tweets produced about the 6PM YLT event, and will show them in a single gallery.

Partners
6PM YLT is a format conceived by the Link Art Center and developed in collaboration with Abandon Normal Devices (AND) and Gummy Industries.

About Link Art Center
The Link Center for the Arts of the Information Age (Link Art Center) is a no-profit organization promoting artistic research with new technologies and critical reflections on the core issues of the information age: it organizes exhibitions, events, conferences and workshops, publishes books, forges partnerships with private and institutional partners and networks with similar organizations worldwide. More info: www.linkartcenter.eu

About Abandon Normal Devices
Abandon Normal Devices (AND) presents world-class artists at the frontiers of art, digital culture and new cinema. A UK based organisation it is a catalyst for new approaches to art-making and digital invention, commissioning public realm works, exhibitions, research projects and a roaming biennial festival. AND has commissioned work from Carolee Schneeman, Krystoph Wodischko, Gillian Wearing, Phil Collins, Rafael Lozano Hemmer and the Yes Men (to name but a few). More info: www.andfestival.org.uk/

About Gummy Industries
Gummy Industries is an online communication and marketing agency based in Brescia, Italy. Their work ranges from consultancy to design and (web) development. They usually work with medium business and large companies, with a strong focus on the fashion industry. More info:http://gummyindustries.com/

About Furtherfield
Furtherfield was founded by artists Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett in 1997 and is been sustained by the work of its community; specialist and amateur artists, activists, thinkers, and technologists, who, together cultivate open, critical contexts for making and thinking. Furtherfield is now a dynamic, creative and social nerve centre where upwards of 26,000 contributors worldwide have built a visionary culture around co-creation – swapping and sharing code, music, images, video and ideas. More info: www.furtherfield.org.

Credits
Concept: Fabio Paris
Production: Link Art Center, Brescia, IT
Co-production: Abandon Normal Devices, Manchester, UK
Website and software development: Gummy Industries, Brescia, IT
Funded by: Creative Europe; Art Council England

6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME is realized in the framework of Masters & Servers, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), Abandon Normal Devices (UK), Link Art Center (IT) and d-i-n-a / The Influencers (ES) that was recently awarded with a Creative Europe 2014 – 2020 grant. For 24 months from now, Masters & Servers will explore networked culture in the post-digital age.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.