Lightening Talk

Judy Barrass

3 minutes of fame

COMMUNITY DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT For Arts Queensland Low Fi Forum

Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts

Monday April 11th 2011

I didn’t set the title of this talk.

I’m guessing whoever chose that title was referring to ‘LOCAL’ community en-

gagement. A sort of warm fuzzy thing—local /community/engagement—feel

good words. The sort of REAL life we are told is good for us and important. The

equivalent to politicians kissing babies.

We’re told sitting at our computers all day is bad for us. Having Facebook

friends instead of real friends is bad for us. That computers will destroy our abil-

ity to relate properly etc, etc.

I’m not so sure it’s right, but it’s a pretty common opinion. (But it might just be

a CIA plot.)

As someone who was a teenager before television I remember all the same

things being said about that piece of new technology.

I live in a regional community but I work in a global community. That’s nothing

new, it’s always been the case that professional artists looked outside their local

community. Technology just makes it easier.

Apart from my life as Judy Barrass, artist, I also have another life as my avatar

Juanita Deharo. Juanita has her own career as a virtual artist, her own website

and CV, and a business selling virtual landscape elements to be used in on-line

game worlds.

Both Juanita and I belong to rich and diverse global communities of interest and

we have many friends , networks, connections and colleagues all over the world.

These are not less valuable or less real than local friends and networks.

The Internet and those connections to the global arts community have allowed

me, and Juanita, to work on a world stage, to become known in places like Por-

tugal or France but totally unknown in my own community.

Whether it’s good or bad, it is true that the more our careers and our social and

leisure activities take us into the global arena the less we seem to engage locally,

and the less relevant the local community becomes to our lives.

This is doubly true for professional artists who are often already marginalized in

the community because of their minimal incomes and solo work practices.

It doesn’t have to be like that.

In 2009 Juanita became a lead artist in Sunshine Coast’s local ‘Treeline’ project.

She set up a Virtual Treeline Gallery in the on-line world Second Life and curated a

series of exhibitions of international artists themed around trees and conservation.

She kept a Flickr site, talked in local schools and pecha kucha nights, and on interna-

tional television. She introduced the international Virtual Treeline artists and their

work to the Sunshine Coast community in a projected exhibition and live stream

artist talks. She showcased the work of local artists in the virtual gallery. She made

virtual installations about her own conservation values.

A couple of books were produced about the project and published as print on de-

mand. The National Library of Australia recently acquired one for their collection.

So… now there’s a heap of people on the Sunshine Coast who have an understand-

ing about what I do when I am at the computer, and they know that virtual art is

more than putting images up on a website. They’ve met some of Juanita’s friends.

They have a sense of ownership. They sometimes call me Juanita. I’m locally known.

In 2010 I participated in Neogeography, a Queensland Writers Centre and

Sunshine Coast Regional Council project looking at the intersection of writing

and technology.

While Virtual Treeline attempted to bridge the gap between cyber and local

space, I used Neogeography to experiment with value adding to my local

community, using my knowledge and skills to help individuals and organisa-

tions use digital technology creatively.

I chose to focus on ‘Alternative Publishing’ introducing people to simple high

and low tech ways to get ideas out there. We started with zines and post-

cards, but we moved on to You tube, Flickr, blogs, Place Stories and the whole

gamut of e-publishing opportunities. Amazingly a lot of this seems so simple

these days, but the project started before the first ipad was released.

http://alternativepublishing.info

As well as free community workshops on zines and e publishing I also

offered my technical expertise to a local environmental organization that

was in the midst of a campaign to have a marine park declared on the

Sunshine Coast. I helped them to put together an educational book that

is available as print on demand on-line. It’s also a template they are us-

ing to find sponsorship for a larger publication.

As an adjunct to their campaign I also made a video of a virtual under-

water environment using images they had, taken on reefs off the sun-

shine coast, as the basis for the virtual environment. The video is on

their website and has been used in various contexts as part of the cam-

paign.

What I got out of working on this project was not necessarily about the prod-

ucts, or about my own art.

It was about seeing that ‘Pling’ of understanding when someone realizes that

technology is something they can use for their own ends. It’s not all bad or

difficult.

Working in cyberspace and belonging to global communities does not neces-

sarily mean we have to be less connected to our local communities. We can

straddle the boundaries, but it’s certainly not easy.

Working in local communities is personally rewarding at that warm fuzzy feeling

level. Funders and arts organisations love it. For artists it’s a mixed bag.

People out there are hungry for engagement with technology– they

can eat you up and spit you out.

Community projects can stifle your ability to get on with more complex and re-

warding things, take you away from your global connections.

When I look at the number of websites and blogs I maintain and the number of

projects I’m now involved in at local level I realize that I have now spread my-

self very thinly, and I’m in danger of losing track of my own directions and prac-

tice.

It takes a lot of time and effort to be a successful artist in one community, let

alone two or three.

There’s a need for balance.

Do artists have to make a choice?