“Dunedin Does Not Exist” presented by McCaw and Gillies
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Collaborative Production
Presentation Title:
- Dunedin Does Not Exist
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
This paper presents One Day Sculpture, Dunedin, an art project in which six geographically separate artists and curators collaborated over a six month period to conceptually develop a site-specific artwork in Dunedin, New Zealand. Contemporary British artists Walker & Bromwich together with New Zealand artists, Douglas Bagnall and ex-pat Adam Hyde and curators Caroline McCaw and Rachel Gillies, began with a dedicated online research period engaging with ideas surrounding collaborative arts practice, digital technologies, and location as it is understood from a distance. This paper navigates this online communication process and how both the artwork and the location were mediated through socially networked technologies.
McCullough (2004) suggests that location models are not just maps of physical position, but “frame” and “cue” the activities that may occur. Specifically, the One Day Sculpture project wiki explores the role and mythology of Dunedin, New Zealand as a location, through the online mediated discussion between people who have lived in Dunedin in the past and present, and people who have only read and heard about Dunedin through the internet and place-based tourism communication.
Collaborative artistic practices were explored widely and by numerous artists in the 1960’s and 70’s, with groups such as Fluxus creating an international network and profile for such collaborations. The impact of the quickweb authoring tool wiki, enables not so much the speedier creation of collaborative artworks, but the speedier connection between international art-groups and documentation integral to the development of the co-authored artwork. In this case collaborative intertextuality begins pre-production, through the use of networked tele-authoring tools.
The role of socially networked technologies enframes and enables the negotiation of a distant location and the establishment of a shared perceptual parameter in which to ground the development of this collaborative art project, and provides the basis for this discussion.
