WWW Po-tent-City is a website project and part of Art Action Earwig‘s multimedia project Po-tent City 2021.
This interactive website project invites open-minded humans to participate in diversifying climate actions online. Through creative activities, the website provides two spaces for the Po-tent citizens to interact with and dwell on. Page 1. Ecology of Wearing: What My Clothing Remembers, reminds you of the origin of your clothing, including patterns of consumption and production. Page 2. Shadow Sign for Bedroom Protest: What I Dare To Do In The Dark, empowers our actions and celebrates our strengths, despite the many forms of isolation we live through. A video call gathering will be hosted for each workshop. Refugees welcome!
This website project is a virtual gathering place for audiences and an archive for their relevant activities, creating a virtual platform that will provide a safe place to interact and house creative visualization of specific data input as an outcome of community engagement. We worked with the same web/app developer in 2020 for our Home Squat Home mobile app project–a light and shadow installation performance transformed into a mobile performance–and learned a lot about creative translation of an intimate theatrical show. This collaboration also facilitated English/Korean language options for broader audiences.
Ecology of Wearing: What My Clothing Remembers
This interactive webpage project developed in relation to our theatre shows Climate Shadow Series: Midnight Mirror and Mo’s Closet, explores the urgency of climate crises deeply entangled with everyday human activities in the globally industrialized world: buying clothing, consuming food, and dreaming the future. Web-based activities will inspire participants to discover the origins of their clothing and imagine the pathway their clothes traveled. By inputting the country where their piece of clothing was made and where the person wears it, a pathway will be animated with a traveling butterfly. This will be made sharable online through creative data visualization. Creative prompts encourage deeper and playful engagement, such as wearing clothing inside out during the meeting to share the tag to learn where their clothes were made. Relaxed engagement will be encouraged so that individuals can choose the best way to relate to prompts and subject matter, depending on their own comfort level.
Tech requirements for participants:
-access to devices such as laptop, PC, or smart phone.
-access to the Internet
-access to Zoom
Shadow Sign for Bedroom Protest: What I Dare To Do In The Dark
This workshop invites participants to join a virtual gathering from their own bedrooms or kitchens. We (artists) lead a 90 min work session for individuals to make their shadow puppet protest signs. For non-visual persons, Voice Sign making option will be available. Besides discussing shadow/ voice sign making method and guiding the process, we will facilitate casual conversations about climate change and our (inter)actions as human allies living with (post-)COVID-19 challenges during the climate crisis. Once the signs are made, the participants will be encouraged to voice their signs and/or project their signs onto a wall or other surfaces using a flash light or other light sources in the dark. Each sign will be captured and uploaded onto Art Action Earwig’s WWW Po-tent-City webpage with an earth shape that will be filled/mosaicked with the documented voice/shadow/light signs.
What to expect and things you can prepare for/bring to the workshop:
-If you are hoping to make cut-out signs, prepare shadow making supplies (pen/pencil, paper, tape, cardboard, materials you can upcycle such as containers in your recycle bins, scissors, cutting blade, cutting mat or thick paper to put underneath.)-a table or floor surface.
-a projection source (flashlight, cell phone flashlight, or overhead projector are good choices)
-If you want to document a shadow sign, you need a room/space that can be made dark (darker is better) and a white/bright surface you can project on such as a wall or sheet.
– This gathering is also about witnessing, conversation, and being together. You can participate in a way that is comfortable and satisfying for you. You can just bring your open mind!
Tech requirements for participants:
-access to devices such as laptop, PC, or smart phone.
-access to the Internet
-access to Zoom
Artistic Team – Key Artists: Art Action Earwig, GunWoo Kim.
Web developer/artist Kim, GunWoo recently worked with AAE on Home Squat Home mobile app (2020) development and is collaborating on Canadian organization Cinevolution Media Arts Society’s research and development of an accessible digital presentation platform for an online festival opening in April 2021. GunWoo studied computer science at Korea National Open University from 2016 to 2019 and also worked as a web application developer and a mobile application developer at start-up companies Moolbit Route and Kinterch. In 2019, he attended the Constellation Summer Camp and MedFest in Tiyatro Medresesi, Sirince, Turkey, interacting with the Open program, Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. At this camp and festival, he met many people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, participated in performances, and raised interest in the relationship between body and machine. He has been developing art related applications as CEO of Ujuchu Studio in Seoul. Opportunity: Stuck in NEXT (2019) was a mobile application for audience participation performances with performance group Collective Doingle. Find Isimi (2020) was developed for an applied theatre project, co-operating with theater company Baeksukwangbu, to interact with children in culturally marginalized areas during the pandemic.