| Abstract | This practice-based research is a reflection upon a community art practice mediated via the social use of digital technologies such as social media, Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) and open data. In combining existing community art methods and methodologies, with those taken from the social use of digital technologies, an attempt has been made to expand community art to include these social sites productively within its practice.
Over the past 40 years, community-focused art practice has produced a significant and mature body of critique derived from a range of issues such as community, identity, co-option by external agendas as well as the artists role and identity; all of which have sought to question the currency of its practice. Is it possible then that methods and methodologies, suggested by the social use of digital technologies, may in part ameliorate some of these critiques and in the process expand the productive sites offered to community art?
As part of this practice based research a community-focused artwork, Landscape-Portrait, was created. This work featured an explicit engagement with these new sites of social interaction. As an exemplar of an expanded community art practice, Landscape-Portrait combined methods and methodologies borrowed from the social use of digital technologies alongside those of critical community art practice, incorporating a network of virtual and non-virtual sites in both its production and dissemination.
In accordance with my research methodology the artworks production and its outcomes were recorded and reflected on. The material generated informed my research outcomes. As a result, this research advocates caution in the championing of the sites made use of by Landscape-Portrait. It argues instead that these sites need to be considered against a set of critical questions regarding their operational culture, terminology, privacy, accessibility, ownership, agency and autonomy; all of which problematise their easy inclusion as productive sites within an expanded community art practice.
In response this research proposes an understanding of site as derived from a complex network of virtual and non-virtual constituents. From this understanding a set of speculations, qualifications and methods have been produced that attempt to map the means by which an expanded community artwork, one that employs particular methods and methodologies taken from the social use of digital technology and critical community art practice, might be used to interrogate the constitutional structure of a site, as part of its consideration as a productive site within an expanded community focused art work. |
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