About the Glocal Project

Writing by Dennis on Thursday, 16 of October , 2008 at 6:10 pm

GLOCAL: AN INTRODUCTION

Glocal (global + local) is an immense, collaborative and multifaceted digital art project that examines the making, sharing and exhibiting of images in the 21st century. Working out of the Surrey Art Gallery’s TechLab, the artists behind Glocal pose questions about the nature of photography at this point in our history: What is a photograph? What is a camera? What is a photographer?

In recent years, these seemingly simple questions have been greatly complicated by the digital revolution. This revolution includes the global proliferation of millions of image-taking devices (such as digital cameras, video recorders, cell phones, and PDAs) and the sharing of billions of images through online networking and archival sites (such as Flickr).

Glocal plugs into these ubiquitous devices and vast networks while encouraging people locally and globally to look at photography in a more critical fashion. Thousands of individuals, including artists, non-artists and youth, are invited to participate in ongoing, multi-voiced, digital dialogues and to collaborate in the making of what promises to be Canada’s largest “contributive” digital artwork. Through its complex of online tools, strategies and communiqués (please see www.glocal.ca), classroom activities, and face-to-face workshops, talks and seminars, Glocal invites participants to expand ideas around digital imagery. It also asks them to add to its pool of images, which now numbers about 4000 and is anticipated to climax at between 10,000 and 15,000 by the end of the year. In so doing, they are participating in the creation of its artwork, whose form and content are still evolving.

By these same means, Glocal examines the shifting nature of “community” in the digital age. As its title suggests, the project addresses how global frameworks can reshape conceptions of local identities. It also encourages local voices to assert themselves globally, by contributing individual points of view to a vast, visual undertaking.

In the physical context of the Surrey Art Gallery, visitors encounter the in-progress digital artwork through an interactive exhibition prototype. Multiple moving and changing images are projected onto a curved screen whose upper, vertical component is designated as a “view port”. Through innovative computer programming, diverse images are juxtaposed or reconfigured according to their formal qualities, such as luminosity, colour, shape, and composition. Gallery visitors may interact physically with the projected artwork by using their hands to select images from the lower, horizontal part of the screen and to flick them upwards into Glocal’s constantly shifting and expanding visual dialogue. Through these processes, participants reflect on the ways in which they apprehend and experience the world through image-making.

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