GLOBAL SCREEN

Global Screen is a project based on the the book of the same title by Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy. The project is conceived as an experiment of creation and co-creation with audiences made up of a physical or visitable exhibition held at the CCCB from 21th January to 27th May 2012, and also of a virtual platform that is functioning before, during and after the physical exhibition.

Screenshots of the videos of Global Screen project

The project has three phases:

1. Incubation http://pantallaglobal.cccb.org/en_GB/incubacio The first phase serves to reveal the process of generation of an exhibition, that is usually hidden, and especially to gather the material for the reverse, created by contributors and co-creators.  The incubation happens in the virtual platform from the 1st of October 2011 until the end of the physical exhibition the 27ht of May 2012.

2. Exhibition http://pantallaglobal.cccb.org/en_GB/exposicio In the physical exhibition – from the 21th of January to the 27th May 2012- , two fields are showed: one is the discourse created by the curators (they call it viewpoint), the other is the reverse (they call it counterpoint), a counter-exhibition created by the users themselves. 

3. Post exhibition http://pantallaglobal.cccb.org/en_GB/postexposicio Global screen will continue in the physical tour of the exhibition, in the creation of a file that registers the conceptual and formal project, with input from all contributors and co-creators.

THE VIRTUAL PLATFORM: http://pantallaglobal.cccb.org/en_GB/

Global Screen is an exhibition that has existed on the Internet since 1 October 2011 through the virtual platform pantallaglobal.cccb.org, from where participation in the project is coordinated and the exhibition’s work in progress is explained.

The CCCB launched the website of the project asking people to send videos to reflect on the thesis of the exhibition: how the screens influence us in the 21st century.

Virtual Platform of Global Screen - Incubation

How the virtual platform works?

In the virtual platform users can discover view-point proposed by the curators in which their view of the power of screens is developed. And create the counter-point in which you will be able to give their own view, choosing between the seven themes that define the exhibition:

HISTORY SCREEN

POLITICS SCREEN

SPORTS SCREEN

ADVERTISING SCREEN 

EXCESS SCREEN

SURVEILLANCE SCREEN 

GAME SCREEN

The users send the videos through a formulary and after a moderation process the video is published in the video platform Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/pantallaglobal) The CCCB has chosen Vimeo because is also a social network for audiovisual creators and artists. It’s a good place to create a community around the project.

Take Part page at Global Screen virtual platform

Selection conditions

The CCCB and the curators want to open the participation to all individuals. The only rules that the video must follow are that they must be audiovisual pieces of maximum duration of 2 minutes and they bust based on one of the categories defined by the project: history screen, politics screen, sport screen, advertising screen, excess screen, surveillance screen, game screen..

Participation results: diversity of focuses, techniques and the styles

The day of the opening of the physical exhibition, the users have already sent 182 videos. The videos that fuel the exhibition’s counterpoint reflect the emergence of an audiovisual culture free of prejudices, with a singular diversity of focuses, techniques and styles. Trivalisation of politics, oversights of history, criticism of consumerism, the reality of fiction, the fictions of reality, the excess that leads to indifference of the fear of an Orwellian world, are some constants of pieces that use remixing, animation, photomontage and stop-motion with ease.

All these videos are screened and the call for participation is open until the end of the exhibition. Each day the number videos increases. 

Voting

A system of voting has been created to promote the videos inside the physical exhibition. There is a special menu “Most voted videos” in the exhibition display to screen the most popular videos.

The work-in progress blog and Global Screen on the Social Media

One of the goals of the project is to reveal those exhibition gestation processes that usually remain hidden. The virtual platform has a work in progress blog  where the members of the team and other collaborators explain the evolution of  project and publish multimedia content (interviews with experts, bibliography, links of reference etc.) related with the topics of Global Screen.

The project also has a Twitter account @pantallaglobal and a Facebook Page where the team communicates with the community interested in the project and up-to-dates the last contents published in the virtual platform.

THE EXHIBITION http://pantallaglobal.cccb.org/en_GB/exposicio

The physical exhibition presents a single screen that is the canvas of the exhibition, an audiovisual strip running through the galleries from start to finish. This continuous screen shows the various themes or sections of the exhibition (history, politics, sports, advertising, excess, surveillance, game) proposed by the curators and presented in the form of audiovisual works.

In front of this single screen, the visitor can find the counterpoint, a participatory open screen mechanism that comprises the visual contributions of anyone interested in collaborating in this process of joint reflection on the role of screens in the contemporary world. These short audiovisual pieces are processed on Global Screen’s virtual platform and form part of the physical exhibition and its subsequent tours.

Global Screen - Physical exhibition - Counterpoint screen : Visitors can interact with the counterpoint screen and choose what they want to see projected

Global Screen, a project showed in different multimedia formats

One of the challenges of Global Screen is to reflect on the new languages and formats of creating and distributing culture. In this sense, the CCCB has conceived this project as a test bench for developing and studying in depth the challenges represented by virtual exhibitions and meta-exhibitions.

Inspired in a book, the project can be visited or consumed in these formats:

• As a website (virtual platform/work in progress blog)
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• As a physical exhibition
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• As a virtual tour: The CCCB opened the physical exhibition along with its digital version: a 3D environment that it is not a mere transposing of the physical exhibition. To visit the virtual version click here 

Virtual environment of Global Screen: A 3D view of the virtual exhibition

• On the mobile – Exhibition AR mobile app: The exhibition has a mobile app designed to be used in one of the rooms of the physical exhibition (Game Screen section). “The Other Side” is an augmented reality application that invites users to discover a series of everyday gallery objects hide from view as they wander around the room and enter this digital, yet very present, on-screen world. The users can also download the markers from the exhibition to play the game at home.
• As a catalogue (paper publication)

Reasons to propose this project to the Best of the Web awards

I think Global Screen is a good example of a new model of creating cultural projects for this reasons:

It aims to co-create a crowded sourced exhibition with the audiences, showing all the images generated by the boom in collective creativity encouraged by the Internet and new technologies.

It reveals those exhibition gestation processes that usually remain hidden through the work in progress blog.

It confronts the thesis of the curators with the people point of view on the impact of screens in seven different fields: history, politics, sports, advertising, excess, play and surveillance. The physical exhibition shows all the videos received through the virtual platform and put them in the same level that curator’s discourse.

It experiments with new formats and languages. Global screen can become a testbed for the deployment of Internet genre exhibition with all the challenges and dilemmas posed by a rapidly changing skyline.

It’s a long-term project: Usually participatory projects end with the physical exhibition and Global Screen will continue with touring versions of the physical exhibition, with the creation of an archive that allows the project's conceptual and formal evolution to be recorded, with the contributions of all the contributors and co-creators.

Global Screen is a project which digital and “physical” version has the same importance. Both teams (exhibition team and digital platform team) have worked together and that shows that cultural projects in this century should be understood as transversal initiatives, with different kind of professionals creating together for audience’s engagement.