Art of Participation

I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on last Monday. It was just me and a couple girls from work. One of the exhibits was the Art of Participation. It had videos and displays of art starting in the 5o's where the art only worked if people participated. That part alone was pretty cool. They had a piano there with blank music sheets on the wall and a video of John Cage's score being performed on the streets. Only he didn't play the piano. The focus was not on the instrument but on what the audience would do and the sounds they would make. If yo want to see more about John Cage and 4'33" you can click on the link here: http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/audio/aop_tour_402?autoplay=true

They also have display of photography entitled The Gift. It is pictures of normal people displayed on a huge wall. They rotate the pictures throughout, but the cool thing is that all the pictures are of people who have come to the museum. They had a photostudio set up and you volunteered to get your picture taken and then it became part of the art. It was so cool.

The best was that there were ones that everyone could participate. I got to be in several art pieces. I talked in a microphone that talked back, be a lady on the computer that could fly, take a survey about a series of photos, and more. My favotrite was when we got to put together sculputures from the items. We were supose to follow the posted directions, but we didn't see them until the security pointed them out because we were playing fruit hockey and doing other things instead. This is what we were supose to do:

Instead this is what we did:

All in all, it was a fun day. We spent all day there and still didn't make it through the whole museum. The Art of Participation was only two floors of the museum. We also got to see some Diego Rivera, Jackson Pollack, and even a Pablo Picasso. There was an exhibit of photography that was way interesting. Besides the Art of Participation exhibit, my favorite was the 1000 journals project. This project is where someone put out 1000 blank journals all over San Francisco and asked that if you found it, add to it and then post it online. If you finished the journal, you were asked to send it back. They had several journals on display. It was so interestng to see what people wrote. If you found a journal that you were to add to and then the public would see it, what would you include. I found it so intreguing what people decided to write. I am just curious about people and what makes them tick. The journals were sent out in 2001 and some are still out there. Many have ended up in foriegn countries. I love to see how creative people were. If you want to check it out, they have a website for the projects, and even have made a documentary about it. You can check it out at http://www.1000journals.com/