Steven Read Goes Crowdsourcing for "Wooded Folk" Show

According to Wikipedia, the word "crowdsourcing" is a relatively new word, coined in 2006 to describe the practice of obtaining services, ideas or funds from a large group of people, usually from the larger online community. In recent years I've seen all kinds of Kickstarter campaigns emerge, seeking funds for making movies, games and other projects. Many of these fundseekers are raising millions of dollars in pledges.

This week a more modest request fell into my inbox and I thought I'd pass it along.

One of the most exciting student art shows in recent years was the ten man show that took place in the former European Bakery space, May 2011. Five of these young art students moved on after graduation, but five others remained. Four of these, among them Steven L. Read, banded together with Richard Hansen, founder of the DuSu Film Festival, to form the PRØVE Gallery at another abandoned space in the Sons of Norway Building.

In the following year Read was able to secure a show in the John Steffl Gallery at the Duluth Art Institute which he titled (un)natural reactions. His exhibition there was a cross between minimalist sculpture and his reactions to the North Shore.

Preparing for another show.

Read left the area after one year with the PRØVE to move to Pennsylvania. In an attempt to fund his March show titled Wooded Folk, he is reaching back to his former circles. According to Read, " Being raised on a farm and spending time in the woods of Minnesota has allowed me to have a very personal connection to nature. I want to help people see that there are ways to connect to nature without having to build their own version of Thoreau’s cabin. With your help, I will be able to obtain the materials needed to give each piece of Wooded Folk the best capability to express these emotions and ideas without compromising on materials or methods."

One of the features of this campaign is his creative way of rewarding those who contribute... by giving back some of his own creative output, from decals to limited edition reproductions and more. It made me think of Elliot Landy's Kickstarter campaign designed to fund the production of a book of photos from that classic period when Dylan was in seclusion making music with what became known as The Band in the House at Big Pink. People who contribute various amounts are rewarded with everything from signed photos to posters and/or copies of the book.

Learn more about Steven Read's campaign. Help an emerging artist who continues to demonstrate innovation and initiative.

Meantime, hope to see you at one of tonight's art openings. The weather has indeed turned.

(un)natural reactions at the DAI

More On Crowdsourcing

I'm nearing the end of Jeff Howe's insightful, contemporary bestseller on Crowdsourcing and I found a very minor error. The book is quite excellent and a worthy read describing the power of collaboration. He applies is to business enterprises, telling story after story of how companies used an open-ended undefined group of people to solve problems and perform sometimes daunting tasks. (He does not apply the term to revolutions or the overthrowing of governments like we are currently witnessing on the global stage, but I'm guessing that book will soon be written by someone, too.)

In telling success stories about companies and people who used crowds to good effect, he talks about American Idol and the incredible run it has had due to its use of the crowds who participate in turning talented wanna-bes into superstars. And in a following anecdote Howe describes a company that is striving to use the masses to produce films outside the ironclad Hollywood system where a handful of studio heads decide what films will be made or panned.

In listening to the story of this latter company, it was clear to me that he was unaware of how this very act of crowdsourcing was instrumental in Walt Disney's early success. The details of that story can be found in David Ogilvy's 1978 autobiography.

Ogilvy, one of the most influential ad men in history and co-founder of the global agency Ogilvy & Mather, began his career as a Paris chef. In his mid-twenties he came to the States looking for a career change and managed to become part of the Gallup organization, a pioneer in the science of polling. Gallup and company were stationed out east but Ogilvy saw an opportunity for Gallup in the emerging world of Hollywood. What he did was use polling to help Disney determine in advance what kind of animated films would most likely succeed. Polling was, in essence, an early form of crowdsourcing.

By using feedback from the crowd, Disney was able to expend energy on projects with a higher probability of success. Ogilvy's Autobiography detailed a number of these projects which ultimately contributed to Disney's fame and fortunes. Later, when he reached New York and began his life in the advertising trade, Ogilvy continued to apply what he had learned about the value of the crowd.

In short, Howe is right about crowd sourcing. But he appears to have been unaware that this isn't the first time such a tool has been used in Hollywood.

Till next.... and have a good day.

Saturday Musings

The exponential growth of social media has to be a historically unprecedented phenomenon. What it means for the future waits to be seen, but one thing is certain... it will not leave us unchanged.

Jeff Howe, in his book Crowdsourcing, offers numerous examples of ways in which the interactive connectivity of the Internet is producing effects that could never have been achieved previous to this point in time. For example, by means of millions of volunteers, a project striving to make contact with life in outer space has logged over a trillion hours of dedicated efforts in analyzing signals from the sky. There is no way a research institute could fund any team for such a massive project, yet the avid fans of such research have demonstrated that money is not the only way to get things done.

Howe argues that technology has enabled the rise of an amateur class that is reducing the gap between non-professionals and professionals or specialists.

On the one hand, this is exactly what the pessimists have feared. Page layout software programs enable nearly anyone to produce brochures, handbills and posters. The naysayers point out that, yes, this may be true but what we have is a lot of bad looking stuff because these untrained people have no sense of design.

The same goes for writers. In fact, with the advent of blogging, we may have more writers than readers!

Other controversial features of this new phenomenon include the pittance wages that can result as companies turn to the crowds to produce work that they might otherwise pay real workers a living wage for. Look, if you will, for freelance writing jobs online and you will find plenty... most of which pay pennies for content that helps make the "content provider" dollars.

Another form of crowdsourcing has been the emergence of microlending clubs where globs of people will pool their resources to give loans to people who are being turned down by banks. The problem is when the recipient of the loan defaults, how much money are you going to spend on legal fees when you only lost a hundred dollars that was pooled together with thousands of other suckers. (O.K., that is the more onerous spin and I should retract the "sucker" epithet.)

Anyways, there have been plenty of movements amongst artists to work collaboratively, even before all this high tech fandango. And I know many today for whom the Internet is simply a means for broadening the collaborative possibilities of creatives.

In the meantime, life goes on all around you. Make the most of it.

Noteworthy Blog of the Day: Ricelander's Art Gallery