How cool would it be if YOU had control over the artwork displayed in your neigbours home, or that in a strangers home on the other side of the world, of even that displayed for millions in the Tate Modern in London?

Full control yet no influence

This, in a way to have full control about what will be displayed there on a (not any) given time, be able to interact with the people viewing the artwork you’ve chosen or even made. But with one catch, the people viewing (yes, that means you as well) have NO control about what will be displayed in their homes, offices or museums. They just have to deal with whatever is shown. (Though we could think of a panic-button for stuff that’s really inappropriate.)

No Limit

There’s no limit in what kind of artwork should be there. Think of photo’s, scanned paintings, sketches, industrial design, old masters, very modern work, computer created paintings or maybe even interactive digital artwork where you actually become part of the art.

Licenses

The artwork to be pushed of course should be licensed in a way that it’s legal to use this way. So Creative Commons, explicit permission from the author or copyright holder (that can be you, if you design/create artwork yourself), etc. This does not mean the artwork has to be free. You can decide to permit the community to use your work specifically for this purpose, being able to buy the artwork if people want the original, a paper copy or want to view it for an extended period of time.

That’s it for now

I’ll leave it there. There are plenty of loose ends in this concept, I think that’s exactly how it should be. It’s a concept which has to be made by the people using it.

Equipment

One last word about the equipment needed for this. I think every bit needed is already available or can be easily created.  I think the main parts are:

• Internet (to push and pull the artworks)
• Digital photo frames (large ones as well, you don’t want to be limited to a mere A4 or A3 format painting)
• LCD displays on the photo frames to show information about the artwork (who uploaded it, who designed it and what’s the title of the artwork)
• Computers (to give ways of interacting with attendees of the project)
• A server (to provide the necessary infrastructure)
• Scanners/photo camera’s/e-tablets/etc. (for scanning and uploading artwork/paintings you design yourself to the community)
• Some custom software for interacting with each other

Sketch created 19th November 2010.