Artist Links Process
When a date has been decided to run an Artist Links event a Facebook events page would be set up and digital invitations would be sent out to everybody on the fine art course. The event was set up in such a way whereby anybody could become a moderator and therefore invite all of there friends to join in with the event. This required an element of trust from users as a new admin member had control to delete the event completely, however the risk paid off because people were generally happy to help.
Once the event and guest list had been established, Facebook also gives you the option to send a message out to all of your guests at the same time. My message to all potential guests requested that anybody wanting to be involved with Artist Links simply had to send me a link to there favourite YouTube video, the only requirement was that it was under 5 minutes in length or that if it wasn't I would more than likely be editing it down.
It is at this point that the process becomes more involved. I would receive on average about 20 emails with multiple links. If somebody sent me a message with three clips in it, I would usually just work my way down the list until they had used their allocated time period. This was because for the success of Artist Links as a snapshot of studio culture it became essential that my artists hand does not bring the validity of the film into question.
Once the clip had been loaded up on youTube and I have checked that it worked I then copied the URL of the clip into a piece of software called 'YouTube Downloader HD' which then pasted the clip onto my desktop. Once all of the clips have been downloaded I pasted them into a corresponding folder, for example 'Artist Links 9/12/09' and opened up my second piece of software that was needed 'FLV Converter Pro'. Once all of the files have been converted from FLV to AVI they are ready to be edited.
All files are highlighted and then dragged into Windows Movie Maker. In movie maker, You then make a brief title sequence with the date of the event and place the clips into the time-line in no particular order. Placing the names of the person who submitted before every clip.
Artist Links 1
Artist Links 1.0 was on a very cold night in December 2009. I had paid local graphic designer Sarah Abbott to design the flyer and I had heard that there were a fair amount of people coming down to see the event. As I was unsure about the number of visitors to the event I held it in the small gallery space in Arundel Gate court. The building already has pc stations with inbuilt projectors. I decided this evening to keep the edited file on my removable hard drive as this meant that the edited file would not be compressed. There were a lot more people at the event than I had anticiapted for. However the smaller environment made a closer atmosphere, like a gig in a small venue.
As the clips began to be streamed I noticed that people felt embarrased about having there name placed before there chosen clip. Most of the submissions came quite flippantly through Facebook with very little consideration, however once they were in a room full of there course friends people felt a pressure for there clip to be entertaining and this highlighted my first point of concern for the success of Artist Links. Are people choosing clips or are they trying to impress there friends? However this awkward tension before a participants clip was shown is in no way detrimental to the end product of the evening, the DVD of collective content. This is because in making this digital archives of the passions and tastes of our course it is unescapable that people will not adhere to the collective in which they belong.
As the evening drew to a close it became apparent to me that slight intervention via my hand was necessary in making future events a success. I simply needed to pace the clips better, placing long clips next to brief ones, would go further in keeping the audience engaged.
When the film ended I made a brief speech and reiterated my thanks for all the submissions I had received and suggested that the dialogue continued in the pub.
Artist Links 2
After the success of the first event in the series I decided to continue the experiment to see what happened by repeating the process of the first event. As usual I made a call for submissions and they began coming in quickly. Around this time I had won a place on a student bursary program in S1 gallery and therefore I asked for help form the head curator, Louise. She kindly forwarded my call for submissions to all of the members within the Gallery
Although I wanted to get another flyer made with Sarah Abbott time constraints on her part meant that it would not have been possible to make one in time, so with the help of fellow student bursary member Linny Venables we made a flyer in the studio at S1 gallery. We also decided to make the flyer into a stop motion animation whereby this could be uploaded to YouTube to promote the event further.
I wrote a new statement of objectives for this event and posted another call on Facebook and waited. This time I only got a total of 20 clips, so I had to enter into murky territory for a curator 'Pestering people for submissions' I did this via the chat client on Facebook. Having access to over 300 people, I could usually find somebody I wanted to be involved and suprisingly this new tactic of pestering people via web 2.0 platforms was effective and commonly people did not understand the nature of the project so this only opened up the dialogues further.
With numbers higher than expected at the first event I thought it would be a good idea to find a bigger space to screen the submissions. So I moved next door. Other new additions included having a bar for refreshments and having a second projector in the communal area showing music videos whilst people waited at the beginning and in the intermission
This event was by far the most successful in terms of attendance and there were at least 40 people present for the screening. As I highlighted earlier I was concerned that after the first event the nature of the submissions may change because people may have noted audience appreciation and disapproval. I was right, they had although this was in no way detrimental to the night, people had actually strived to surpass there original submissions from the first event and the event began to feel more like a a community making these collective screenings together and therefore my role as co-ordinator was successful as the event was not focussed around me.
Artist Links 3
The final Artist Links of the year was the least successful. Against the advice of my friends I booked it on a night before university deadlines were due and this had a knock on effect on the numbers of people at the event. Whilst numbers fell from 40 to 15 people there were still positives to be taken from the event. The normal method of placing peoples names before the start of a clip had been scrapped. This made the editing process much simpler and relieved peoples personal tension for the clip they were about to show. I also started to group the content together in terms of its theme, if one appeared during the editing process. The major new theme that emerged from this session was 'autotune remix' were basically the banal was re-edited into a song through the use of auto-tune software, which was becoming a popular YouTube trend at the time.
