Art Maps - Telling Tales of Engagement aims to further 'tell the story' of the impact of the Art Maps research project to a wider and differentiated audience.
Art Maps is a collaborative research project between Horizon Digital Economy Research (University of Nottingham), Tate (Tate Learning, Tate Online and Tate Research) and the Centre of Intermedia at the University of Exeter, exploring art, place and mobile technology.
About one third of the Tate collection, comprising almost 70,000 works, has been indexed with information about locations, typically the site represented. For some works this information is quite specific but in many cases it is quite general, referring only to a city, region or major geographical feature. The Art Maps project aims to improve the quality of the geographical data relating to these works, with members of the public contributing information, as well as to gain new insights into how people use mobile technology to understand their environment through art, and art through their personal histories in relation to location and mapping. By looking at a site in relation to artworks, users become more familiar with both the site and the art, explore how artworks relate to or differ from the sites they represent, how sites have changed over time, and how sites have been represented and experienced by different artists.
Over the course of 2012, Art Maps web and a mobile application were developed, allowing people to relate artworks to the places, sites and environments they encounter in daily life. Importantly, the new software enables audiences to explore ideas of site, place and location, environment, representation and memory, both on their own and collaboratively (for example, families, friends and schools). Art mapping, as audience engagement mechanism, was investigated through two workshops, held respectively in April and in October 2012 at Tate Britain in London. The preliminary results seem promising, and suggest a value for a further dissemination of the project to a wider and differentiated audience.
So, to further 'tell the story' of Art Maps, and through the support of Art Maps applications, we plan: to organise online events targeted at digital audiences, as well as Tate in-gallery activities (e.g. in the context of the "Looking at the View" exhibition); to co-design art-trails with the public; to involve the research community through interactive events. Broader public engagement will be also attained through the Art Maps presentation to other events (e.g. Science Festivals).
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