- Eddy Peng, Ecollective, 2023, website (https://bit.ly/ecollective-gallery)
Ecollective Virtual Art Gallery
Eddy Peng
Introduction
By combining community co-creation and modern technology into digital peerocracy, my project is a statement that innovation can unite people’s voices, break down climate change into its essential aspects, make the complex topic more digestible, and ultimately influence public opinion by calling on the audience to act.
Climate change is a complex issue affecting all aspects of life. So, it is very challenging to know where one can start and contribute to making the environment better. It makes people think that they are alone in their fight and their efforts would be in vain and a sense of hopelessness would engulf their mind. If I could bring artists' voices together on various aspects of climate change and link resources where people can explore more, the audience can pick and choose which aspect they are most able to contribute to making better, making people feel supported in their fight against climate change and exposing emerging artist’s works to the world by making them accessible on the internet.
In my project, I created a fully-responsive and accessible website art gallery called Ecollective1 that showcases artist’s works while linking the audience to more resources. Any artists who create art related to climate change can use the submission function on the website to submit their artworks for evaluation and acceptance into the gallery. Artists are more than just artists showcasing their work.
Artists are active contributors to the website because they not only provide their work, they also take a prominent role in representing their work in the gallery by explaining how their artwork came to be. I got inspiration from other art gallery websites and created a design in a design tool called Figma. Then, I transferred those designs onto a website builder, making the designs viewable not only on desktop but also mobile, and accessible to screenreaders. However, my project is much more than the end product. My project was an experiment on peerocracy and I will tell that story.
Why Collaboration?
Taking a step back and going back to the beginning of the quarter, I knew coming in that the course would be a different structure compared to other Art History courses I’ve taken before. I found sociocracy fascinating and since I have never collaborated with other students in my Art History course, I was empowered to do something collaborative for my final project. By chance, my section had 11 people. From our first meeting in the open collaboration lecture room, each person in the group had a different direction that they wanted to take. Upon learning that, I thought it would be interesting to pull our entire group together and create our own little gallery space. As a website designer, I wanted to see what I could do to contribute to a better earth and if that is to create platforms that amplify voices, I am all for it.
I was not concerned with the fact that there were 11 of us in the group even though it could pose a serious logistical issue. The more people I have in the group the stronger the voices. When I was flipping through the course textbook Art and Climate Change by Maja and Reuben Fowkes, the work near the end caught my attention. Training for the Future2 by Jonas Staal and Florian Malzacher caught my eye because there were so many people gathered in a circle and I wondered what they were doing.
When I read more about it, I learned that those participants came together to receive instructions from artists, activists, and theatre makers on getting used to exercises that tackle modern troubles such as learning how to express collective demands (Fowkes, 2022). This artwork demonstrates that one voice simply is not enough and that we have to collaborate with others to be heard and for real change to occur. It takes us all or at least, as many people as possible, and seeing Staal and Malzacher facilitate such a large project, empowered me to lead too.
- Jonas Staal and Florian Malzacher, Training for the Future, 2019, collaborative exercise
Why a Website Gallery?
Even though I was a web designer and wanted to use my passion for art history and climate change, that was not the only reason why I decided to create an art gallery website. I think the pinnacle of human creation is the internet. Today, individuals and organizations need to have an online presence to be successful, and that includes artists. Near the beginning of the quarter, we took a look at Studio Olafur Eliasson3, Olafur Eliasson’s gallery website. Because we have access to the internet, we were able to have discussions about his artworks like Ice Watch4, which was installation art that publicized climate change by bringing real ice from the Arctic for the public to interact with.
- Olafur Eliasson, Studio Olafur Eliasson, 1995 – Present, website
- Olafur Eliasson, Ice Watch, 2018, Tate Modern, London, installation
By archiving this piece digitally, I realized that people can learn about Ice Watch4 and spread its message even after the art piece in real life has melted. After that class, I became curious about other online galleries that were floating around on the internet. I came across many. One such website was the RZ Collection5 by PixelJam, which awed me with its website layout. The simplicity of the platform’s colors (white, black, and gray) along with its generous white space heavily influenced the design of Ecollective1.
- PixelJam, RZ Collection, 2018 – Present, website
Another gallery that inspired me was the Pace Gallery6, which was founded by Arne Glimcher in 1960. Particularly, the gallery’s website included the in-real-life gallery’s gray walls that made the art pieces pop out and separated them from the white backgrounds. I reflected on that design choice in Ecollective1 by placing all works of art on top of a gray background. By making art accessible online, people (like me) could still get a taste of the experience of visiting an art museum even when they cannot in person. Existing online art galleries have proven the need to stay updated in the age of innovation.
- Arne Glimcher, Pace Gallery, 1960 – Present, website
The Consequences of Innovation
When I was in the Art library searching for books on the shelf that were relevant to my topic of creating a website, I came across Eco-visionaries - Art, Architecture, and New Media after the Anthropocene, a collection of texts by various authors but edited by Pedro Gadanho. One of them stood out. Sabrine Himmelsbach is a director at the House of Electronic Arts and stated that “art is interlinked with media and reflects the influence of media technologies” (Gadanho, 2018). Essentially, when technology innovates, art will also innovate and keep pace. However, when technology innovates, it comes with a cost.
The painting Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway7 by Joseph Mallord William Turner embodies innovation and human progress. Turner shows the speed of the train to older forms of transportation such as horses and boats. This is a major step forward in technology. However, upon zooming into the train tracks, a rabbit could be seen running for its life. It symbolizes the impact of innovation on the environment.
- Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway, 1844, Oil on Canvas
Humans are also part of this environment. In this television advertisement from the Environmental Defense Fund titled Train8, the adult proclaims that global warming won’t affect them and steps off the tracks to reveal a child about to be run over. Once again, the train represents the march of human creation and its pollution. Turner’s painting was more than a century older than the advertisement. But, we can see that we have become the rabbit that our creations will run over. However, humans can also use technology and innovation to do great things for the environment.
- Environmental Defense Fund, Train, 2006, television commercial
The Benefits of Innovation
An example of technology being used to make a difference was seen in Art and Climate Change. Ignacio Acosta’s Copper Geographies9 told the story of how copper was being extracted from the earth through maps and images, revealing the giant scars that were made in the environment (Fowkes, 2022). By using technology to capture the frightening birds-eye view of the area, the audience gets a sense of the magnitude of the act of vandalism that has taken place and perhaps instills a bit of conservation and recycling in their minds. So, more mines such as the one from the image don’t become even more widespread throughout the landscape. Technology allows artists and people to do what they can’t before.
However, by combining technology and collaboration, the results can be surprising. I recall in the book The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change by T. J. Demos (and others) that there was a chapter called Our House Is On Fire by Finis Dunaway the moment where Senator Dianne Feinstein was confronted by a group of children about her vote for the Green New Deal. The confrontation, which turned into a lecture from Feinstein on the harsh reality and how the government worked, was recorded on smartphones and went viral, showcasing the power of technology in spreading “amateur-produced imagery to mass audiences” (Demos, 2021). This moment in history will live on the internet because of the people who contributed to its virality. The video can be seen as a symbol of government inaction in the face of climate change no matter what side of the Green New Deal one is on.
- Ignacio Acosta, Copper Geographies, 2012 – 2016, map & photograph & text
Understanding Collaboration
With an understanding of the impact of technology and collaboration, I began to make a plan to lead this large group. Throughout the project, I found myself in a unique position. I had the power to decide how ideas are visually represented and I didn’t think much of this until I went to the art library and was captivated by two books. The second book that stood out to me was James Veenhoff and Martijn Pater’s book titled Collaborate or Die - The Changemaker's Handbook for Co-Creation.
The book discusses the four types of co-creation. For a project to fall into one of the four, it would depend on openness and ownership (Veenhoff, 2021). Essentially, it was about how I could incorporate contributors and how strict should I be. My project falls into community co-creation because anyone can submit art related to climate change and become a contributor to the website. As contributors, they will provide images of their artwork. However, I wondered whether I should involve them in any other aspect of the website.
The Influence of Rifkin
Eventually, I found my answer from Jeremy Rifkin’s idea of peerocracy in his book The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth. In chapter 12, he discusses citizen assemblies, which is an extension of democracy that makes citizens an integral part of the decision-making process. Rifkin goes on to provide examples of two approaches to peerocracy. In 2019, both the British and France established citizen assemblies to deliberate and propose initiatives and programs that address climate change. In the end, both assemblies’ recommendations were much more assertive in scope than the ones put forth by elected officials.
However, that was where the two groups diverged. The biggest difference was how the discussions were held. France gave its citizens more freedom because citizens led the discussion and outside public advice was allowed. On the other hand, the British used a controlled approach and told citizens not to discuss matters outside of the assembly. The result was France’s citizen assembly produced more recommendations than the British and in greater scale and depth. However, the British produced recommendations that were more technically rigorous because it was expert-led and made for a better peer experience. Ultimately, Rifkin believed that by combining the best of both approaches, peer assemblies would be a great benefit to democracy (Rifkin, 2022).
So, after reading the chapter, I knew that my teammates should have a say in how their works are represented for transparency and fairness. So, in addition to providing their works of art, I would also allow them to write the art descriptions. This way, the artist’s perspective is most accurately represented. I saw this as a similar situation to how Native Americans fought to have their voices heard in museums. In the article by Amy Lonetree titled Decolonizing Museums, it proclaimed that currently, “Indigenous people are actively involved in making museums more open and community-relevant sites” (Lonetree, 2012). When representing art that is not their own, curators must involve relevant peoples’ perspectives. As a kind of curator myself, I must get artists to be actively involved as well.
So, I balanced Rifkin’s idea of a structured and open form of peerocracy by giving my teammates guidelines on what content to include so they would have a solid direction to take when telling the story about their work. Incorporating peerocracy did not stop there, however. During the process of putting together not only the website with the initial contributor’s works but also the course group assignments, I had to put trust in my teammates. When starting an assignment, we would all be responsible for our own individual portions and once all parts have been completed, we would go back (asynchronously) and refine the document from head to toe. Compared to individual work, peerocracy is a lot slower because one has to move with the group. However, even though it is slower, we were able to be more comprehensive.
Addressing Feedback
After we presented in front of the class, I received some feedback regarding my portion of the project. One piece of feedback was about the organization and categorization of our art pieces. Specifically, they suggested reorganizing the artworks “so things are nice and sequential without overlap of content and sentiments.” My classmate has a good point. I got the categorization of artworks idea from Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi’s article on Salmon Culture - Exploring Museum Sovereignty Through an Exhibition Project. In it, she details how the Salmon Culture exhibition came to fruition. It included bringing in multiple perspectives including Native and non-native aspects (Jackinsky-Sethi, 2023).
That inspired me to break down climate change into multiple aspects based on my teammates’ ideas for their art pieces. It was a good idea because climate change as a whole was too complex of an issue to understand. However, overlap among the categories is inevitable because they are so interconnected. In the future, there may be more artists who want their artworks to be showcased and thus, have the potential to create even more overlaps. One solution would be to bring this issue to the other artists and proceed with reorganization as a collective.
Another aspect of the project that needs to be updated is the website gallery itself. How the website is configured right now is not as scalable as I would like it to be. For instance, I built the website using a website builder rather than actual development code. For this project, I chose to use a website builder because of its efficiency rather than using coding languages. If I wanted to give my audience a more immersive experience in the future (like more extravagant layouts and animations that make content even more appealing to interact with), a website builder would not be the right decision.
Speaking of the design, in the future, I would like to update the layout of the art gallery because currently, it does not allow for a higher volume of artworks. If there were two or three times as many art pieces as we have right now, the audience would be scrolling down the website for a long time. Perhaps in the future, there will be filters for people to filter through art. Lastly, for the resource lists that I placed in each category, they would need to be updated. Ideally, I would like to partner up with non-profit organizations and send some members of the audience their way so both parties can benefit. In the end, Ecollective1 will continue to grow, and develop as more artists join and become active contributors.
Bibliography:
- Fowkes, Maja, and Reuben Fowkes. Art and Climate Change. National Geographic Books, 2022.
- Gadanho, Pedro. Eco-Visionaries. Hatje Cantz, 2018.
- Demos, T. J., Emily Eliza Scott, and Subhankar Banerjee. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Routledge, 2021.
- Veenhoff, James, and Martijn Pater. Collaborate or Die: The Changemaker’s Handbook for Co-Creation, 2021.
- Rifkin, Jeremy. The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth. Swift Press, 2022.
- Lonetree, Amy. Decolonizing Museums. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
- Jackinsky-Sethi, Nadia. Salmon Culture: Exploring Museum Sovereignty through an Exhibition Project. First American Art Magazine No. 37, 2023.