Ever since I discovered Napster during my freshman year, I’ve been embracing the digital age with open arms. Thanks to computers, I’m able to discover a new band every day, and my CD collection has doubled for the price of only three or four discs. Really, it’s my bank account that has been embracing the digital age. Like most people, I can’t afford to spend $16.99 on a CD that only has three good tracks. It makes sense to burn a friend’s copy of an album or download a couple of songs off the Internet.
Nonetheless, I do miss the packaging. I miss the physical unwrapping of a new CD, opening the inside cover for the first time and reading the lyrics while listening to the music. The CD cover has creative merit all by itself, and I’m sad to see this art form die out.
However, this digitization of art also has created new forms. The Internet is one obvious example, serving as a forum for sharing ideas and connecting artists. An excellent example of this trend is Miranda July’s Web site, “Learning to Love You More.”
July is a Portland-based artist who has been creating interesting and challenging multimedia works for about 10 years. She makes movies and spoken word/performance albums. In 1995, July started Joanie 4 Jackie, a distribution system to help independent women filmmakers network with each other. A little more than a year ago, she created another artist
network of sorts with the Web site “Learning to Love You More.”
The site, which is a collaboration with artist Harrell Fletcher, posts assignments and invites visitors to complete them. The results are then posted with other submissions from around the world.
Some examples of assignments include: record your own guided meditation, take a picture of strangers holding hands, hang a wind chime on a tree in a parking lot, draw a constellation from someone’s freckles and make a documentary video about a small child.
Assignment No. 27 is to take a picture of the sun. Just a picture of the sun, nothing extra or fancy. More than 50 people have submitted pictures. With every submission, there is also a chance it will be selected for gallery and museum exhibitions. Sun pictures submitted by the deadline were featured in an
exhibit called “Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast in Contemporary Art” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. Selected submissions from another assignment are scheduled to be featured in the Whitney Biennial in New York this March.
I think my favorite assignment is the one that asks people to design a flier describing a typical day in their life and then make 100 copies of it to post around town. Some of the fliers are in black and white, others in color. Some have photos and drawings. Others are simply text. It’s fascinating to see the different ways the assignments manifest themselves. Despite the strict instructions of the assignments, each participant produces a unique result.
Unlike most Web sites, “Learning to Love You More” actually inspires people to back away from their computers and be creative. I’m in love with the idea that I can collaborate with other people whom I’ll never meet to create a piece of art. The Web site prods people to forget about expectations of what the final product should be and create for the joy of the process.
July and Fletcher’s Web site can be found at http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com.