USER GENERATED CONTENT

While not the most popular blogging platform, its certainly the hottest (for now), Tumblr appears to offer less flexibility that the likes of BlogSpot and word press, but its simplicity is second to none with a variety of elegant themes to frame your images, it could be the right format for you. I would say if you are new to blogging, start here.

The rise of the Single Use Blog is something you may have noticed if you hang out in social media much, Mother Advertising Agency have a really great little article on the subject here, http://www.motherlondon.com/culture/the-guide-to-single-purpose-blogs-issue you might think, hmm what's this got to do with my practice, but I think its very important to be aware of what's going on and it may or may not relate to your practice. A few years ago I started #deskPOV http://deskpov.posterous.com/, just a collection of desks that people from the internet had submitted, this blog is on Posterous but I would say now it is more suitable to Tumblr. It suits artists as a collection tool or some kind of online scrapbook for a particular project, see this one http://artschoolhomework.tumblr.com/ you can make multiple accounts so why not network while you are investigating your areas of interest.

As it’s so simple and easy to share its handy for short term projects/events and exhibitions. I popped my tumblr cherry with this blog here http://holdentearoom.tumblr.com/ I was prompting a 'pop up' Tea Room at the school of art which was part performance and part fundraiser. While I didn’t maximise the potential for 'reclogging' and didn’t network within the tumblr community, there is plenty to exploit, especially for very niche content. See this lovely Tumblr featuring the reflections of architecture in puddles. Beautiful and simple. http://puddling.tumblr.com/

Being part of a community, even a virtual one can help give you confidence in your ideas and this is especially vital if you work from home or find yourself isolated in anyway. you can connect your ideas with other people, who knows a collaboration might come out of it or an exhibition.

In this post for Full Circle Arts, I am simply going to focus and the ways that both myself and my collaborator Taneesha Ahmed used this particular blog which accompanied the art show ‘User Generated Content’ a show exploring themes of social media which we brought into the ‘real world’ in the space of Madlab  Our intention was to just play with it, you can see its pretty rough and there are a lot of typo’s but what we wanted was a lot of content, so there was a sense of something brewing, this was really important to us because we wanted to dabble in some of the open source values http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source that was gaining momentum and  reflect the openness and broadcast elements of social media by conducting our curatorial discussions in a public space.. You can even see how we developed this project for Full Circle Arts http://usergeneratedcontent.posterous.com/full-circle-arts-tool-kit 

BROADCAST This approach isn’t for everyone at all, but what it did was it reflected both of our curatorial styles, our tone and our interests, now looking back I get a sense of where we were, even as a journal, I can look back and see ideas that I keep returning to and captures a couple of months of the flurry of the Show, which physically every trace has gone, yet this still remains.

PROMOTE While the blog was an opportunity for open dialogue between the curators and anyone else who would like to pitch in, we also used it to promote the show by linking it to our Facebook and linking it from our twitter accounts, anything that needed a bit more of permanence, such as the brief for the open call, the invite to the openings, press release was all held here among the other noise about the show. I would say if a blog is purely there for promotion of a project it often shows and is less engaging.

ART We used the blog to share ideas on art in this field, including work from participants in the show and even work we wanted to, but couldn’t include because it didn’t fir for whatever reason, beyond that we shared work of artists in the field to propel the conversation between us as curators. This dialogue was about setting some kind of tone for the project. Visuals from the show were included creating an online space for the show to exist virtually, and remains there, suggesting the circular nature of the work, from the virtual to the real to the virtual.

REFLECT because of our open discussion on the blog, while we kept it casual there is a certain awareness that comes with blogging that forces you to consider what you are writing. It helped us solidify our own ideas about the show AND our practice. If you went to art school you will remember having to do a journal, some love and hate this but there’s no denying that writing about your own work in someway pushes it along

To keep in the true spirit of the project, it would be wonderful if you would contribute by posting a comment, this could a question or maybe you have your own blog you would like to show and tell or an artist to share. Please have a look around the blog and comment on any post you like and I’ll get back to you in a timely fashion.

Find the most meaningless YouTube video 

 The NoTube Contest comes back in its third edition with a renewed format. Sharing, tweeting, liking along with your vote, will play a significant role. It is now X-Factor meets Web 2.0, although this time the videos with the least votes will be shortlisted. The NoTube Contest requires its participants to find the least valuable video on YouTube. When considering a video, the participant should make sure there is clearly; No reason to make it. No reason to publish it. No reason to watch it.The NoTube videos should have no value whatsoever! This means: no funny videos, no narratives, no video art, no views, no links, no keywords. The NoTube Contest is about exploiting the YouTube search engine and finding, in its meanders, what was not supposed to be found.

http://notubecontest.com/videos/pool

http://www.holovaty.com/youtube-insult-generator/

Hello Taneesha and I will be doing some work for this great organisation Full Circle Arts, we will talk a little bit more about them as the project develops but for now you can swing by to their website and have a look for yourself. The project has come out of the work we have done under this 'user generated content' project, so we want to use this site s a place for our open conversation between ourselves. its also nice to be back here as we have both been busy on other projects but for now we are reunited and will e chit chatting away here, feel free to chip in, we love it!

Marcelle Holt & Taneesha Ahmed