Turning the World into a Small Room with Kickstarter

Decribe your idea

Any artist will tell you, without an audience for your work, the stuff begins to pile up, and pretty soon you cannot make anymore. You resort to giving or throwing it away. Then you repeat the cycle; or eventually give up. We are social animals. Art needs to be received. Kickstarter is enabling a part of the creative process that has been HUGELY lacking for me in the lonely world of email invites. With Kickstarter, anyone can make a video. The door is open for communicating VIA my artform and simple email. Every fan becomes a potential Medici and I can talk to them. They give me a topic or poem and I write them a son. So different from the ivory tower artist. In one second I became both more vulnerable and more effective as an artist.

Why do you want to share your idea with TEDxUChicago in 2013?

I think there is something deeper going on with Kickstarter that might be repeated in other media, other formats. This may be a model for helping us retain a sense of our humanity in the face of the ever dehumanizing pace of technology. I think artists need to hear how this does more than raises money. Kickstarter combines Social Networking and the Arts in a hands-on community driven way that makes the endeavor of the artist more three-dimensional and begins to hint toward making the practice of art a real livelihood.

How will you share your idea in a creative way?

I am a musician and artist and performer. Using video, music performance I think I can illustrate the complexity of 'packaging' an artist for web-consumption. My art form(s) and community will be the method of performing a lecture. I'd like to compare a real community (my live band) with the online (video projected) communication of fans emailing, asking us to send them songs. The juxtaposition will illustrate how strangers have become a new kind of active audience that enlivens our work.

Discussion

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