By now, we are all familiar with Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans and how the internet allows us to find financial support for our art. But there is another benefit to having fans: recruiting people to you help you create that work in the first place.
Check out this art project by Chris Martin and Larkin Poynton.
Many, if not all of us, have created something with a group for the sheer joy of creating and spending time with friends. But these projects, while memorable and fun, rarely rise to the level of art. That’s because art requires the harnessing of talent, it requires editing and rehearsal and dedication. Those are really hard to do without the potential payoff of an audience to appreciate our work.
Some individuals can pull off art for art’s sake—Vincent Van Gogh, Emily Dickenson, for instance—but group projects are almost never done in a vacuum. To create this video above, Martin and Poynton had to enlist dancers, video people, sound people, lighting people, and others.
Artist: come work on my project, it is going to be really cool and take hours of rehearsal.
Potential collaborator: Who’s going to see it?
Artist: I’m gonna send a copy to my mom.
Potential collaborator: I already made plans that day.
Artist: Um…I didn’t tell you the day.
And this is another way the internet allows art to happen. It’s not just the finances, it’s the enthusiasm.
Artist: come work on my project, it is going to be really cool and take hours of rehearsal.
Potential collaborator: Who’s going to see it?
Artist: 313,000 from all over the world.
Potential collaborator: I’m in.