Brainstorming Results from 01/11/11 - team, please prose-ify and add in some goals for at least one idea!

BIG QUESTIONS

how do we get people to engage with each other, not just with objects?

how do we get people to come in & engage?

how do we keep barriers low with provocative ideas?

if we do any outside stuff, we need a weather strategy

1) Do something with photos of the images planted to find around campus? – some kind of provocative image/object – bring it back? – ORRR take a photo of two team members with the image (& leave it there), a team element – competition!

• Teams of visitors seek images of the works outside the Henry (like a scavenger hunt): finding & photographing some image/representation of Vortexhibition artworks. (Locations are meaningful; images are meaningful; connections with people who’ll let us hide images are meaningful.)
• Making “dig” meaningful.”

2) Dress-up for adults: either visitors themselves, or paper dolls. Inspired by the aprons/Cindy Sherman thing.

• For real people, maybe use the tech lounge green screen? A set of backdrops/etc. that align with a series of different artworks? – select works that allow for multiple participants
• dressing people up in aprons (or other stuff – clichés, stereotypes); take a picture (and send it to people)? how do we lower the barriers to doing this?
• tangible take-away for visitor, making connections to the exhibit
• marketing idea: ad in Daily to print a paper doll off Hankblog – take it to the exhibit & dress it up, take pictures of your doll with art (either in gallery or outside), paper doll as an invitation to play real dress-up?

3) “Airing your dirty laundry” – inspired by aprons/clotheslines: participants can post secrets, rants, etc. that cycle into & out of gallery through skybridge window (MAYBE – depends on logistics).

• connects gallery visitors to high-traffic space outside (& vice versa)
• participants pull secrets/etc. up & out the window for others to see AND down into gallery where they’re exhibited (driving people inside)
• will require some facilitation/good instructions (actual clothesline rigged up, or something else metaphorical/cheap/weather-safe? does that window even open?)
• sharing/exhibiting from outside as an incentive to get people (esp. students) inside, maybe offer a pass to non-students who participate so they can see their work?
• you can air it, you can write/hide it, you can…whatever; can do it later too: Henry’s campus box OR website OR whatever on reverse of cards

4) An homage to the confessional booth thing Amanda mentioned: tell us what object you effing hate, by talking to us through a screen; OR tell (someone? a stranger?) something you’ve never told before, or...

• this could be facilitated by us, or not
• could be object-focused, secret- or other-random-fact-focused, etc., etc.

5) Curators were excited to get visitors to chat online, but they don't - instead, mark visitors as part of a live “chat room” (in salon space or main gallery? if the salon space, you can look down on it…) – colored name tags by accessible non-art topics XYZ (maybe? or images of works?), and people can find others to talk with based on that (& topics = the art? offer some kinds of "chat room rules," whether genuine or arbitrary/silly?)

SECONDARY component for any ideas: advertise (cards w/passes? something else?) a hashtag/place to text updates to from inside the gallery, to capture images/thoughts/level of traffic/etc.