Open Up Now. This won’t hurt a bit.

More voices than any time on this planet’s history are chattering away 24, 7. Listening 99% of the time or listening to the 99% is seemingly impossible. And yet…we all have at least a 1% “feeling” of the import of all this chatter, this Possibility Inherent in our collective conversation, from the most mundane Four Square at Starbucks to the most profound on-the-scene-eye-witnesses to social unrest.

The collective “we,” now imagine, talk and evolve ourselves minute-by-minute through art, image and word online and off to effect change. It would seem a massively impossible conversation to chart the effect on individuals and society, yet we all are trying to do just that. This impossible conversation was the subject of our agency’s recent panel of talking heads, “99% Art In the Public Realm: A Tool for Social Change.” Held during Frieze Art Fair’s first landing in New York from London, on May 6, 2012, we called together our art and branding compatriots for an Instagram expresso shot of the type of discourse we all engage in to create magic for clients.

 15 minutes of Fame for All or “Live Life Off The Wall.” Peel off the Veils.

New Identities for y’all.

In honor of two pairs of this century’s most powerful image/word-concept icon makers, the first pair being Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana, our panel talk was held at site 109’s exhibition of early, revealing photographs of the two artists entitled,“Before They Were Famous,” by William John Kennedy. The second pair, two women designers, both tapped into the conceptual art of their time and its interaction with women’s bodies, one esoteric Miuccia Prada and one libertine, Elsa Schiaparelli, were Talking Heads for the recent “Impossible Conversations” the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute latest exhibit. Our panel looked at the legacy of these art giants, the recent evolving conversation called “The New Aesthetics” in art and, as we call it, “Art off the Cave Walls.”

While the world’s streets send Tweets and messages into the cloud, and we mine imagery and voice to create relevant messages for clients, our talk looked at the impact of new buzzy public creativity in social media events from Komen to Kony to Crop Circles. We looked at the “New Aesthetics” of pixel-play and our social media poster children avatar such as the “surveillanced” and “veiled” identity portrait above, from artist Carla Gannis, and its provenance and evolution from dimension-bending art such as Dali’s visionary, pixelated “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln,” painted in the pre-computer days of the late ‘7o’s.

The term “New Aesthetics,” described as “an eruption of the digital into the physical” became the hot art tip on the lips by a band of smart London-based boys and the 1-year tumblr of James Bridle, and it has been morphing ever since, on Creators Project and as well from the “opened up” digital and fleshy orifices of many Talking. Art. Heads. The birth and death of James’ one-year only tumblr, on the same May 6th day by design, coincidence or Fate as our panel, just hints at what is really going on. With our panel’s insights and a month of my own reflection, I add my Talking Head to the conversation.

“We’ll take our New Aesthetics with a bit more flesh and biology attached, thanks.”

Perhaps, because I am in a female body, I am overly womanly, “sensitive” to this;-) digital meets physical mouthiness. Although I was an early cyberpunk, say in the 80’s and 90’s, happily subscribed way back when to Mondo magazine, the precursor to Wired, we must agree that our bio-bods are not going anywhere anytime soon and while bots are adorable and have innocent and deep thoughts,truth told, we are all still in our fleshy spacesuits, the prime mechanism whilst sensing them bots. New sensory experiences of ephemeral Nature, public performance and the creative mash-up speed of the digital world have made the artist’s world…and reality-altering experience…accessible to all. As big as religion and the printing press…this is a”New Happening” or “New Creativity” (my name for it, a bit less high-brow, “Aesthetics, wha is it?” This is a co-created thing with the 99% masses, no?)  It’s not all digital, dudes, the seers are the seen and vice-versa, existing somewhere in, let’s say, the 4th dimension just for fun. Like your girlfriend in a cute shorty nightgown who knows what’s good for you, peeking around the corner, saying “Honey, don’t be so glued to the tube!”

Much more than ‘women + art=craft” sense this dirty-can-be-fun invitation from the Earth: Bewitched nose-wriggling, True Blood-ish, Baccanalian revelry parties…there…we know you are paying attention now! I pose a better, much more earthy mass name: “The New Creativity.”

Until a bot gets hot and fuzzy and can birth change unto the world, don’t throw the baby’s how-to-body instructions paper away with the box just yet.  Here’s our research manifesto:

Private and public rituals, image-making and collective voice may have “left the building” and entered “Heaven” aka “the Cloud”…yet…

Today’s art “Happening” is now also very clearly on the streets affecting global change and re-invention.

The Artists R Us.

Therefore: Please Make Our Future Funny, Fleshy and Fun!

To add a bit of sex, female and flesh perspective to the dialogue, read more here. The female-ish, flesh-suit, bio-bod happening reflective of self, identity and expression, the “Impossible Conversations,” exhibit neatly and scholarly compared the living designer of clothes neatly bridging high tech and nostalgia, Miuccia Prada, with Elsa Schiaparelli’s surrealistic pioneering designs from the early 20th century. The exhibit was presented through side by side contrasted and similar pairings of their creations and Baz Luhrmann’s film of their imaginary meeting. As a public, toe-in-the-waters, “dimension-disrupting” cultural event for the masses by “traditional media,” the exhibit offers a case-study look at the way we were, where we are and where the vast potential for public experiences of brands (physical) and media (digital) merging are still yet to be created. The Amazon sponsorship of the exhibition itself, with targeted foresight into its upcoming high-fashion e-commerce foray, makes this conversation something akin to a mass birth announcement to its fashion bot baby, ready to birth and go about artfully clothing the identities of its ready-made mass audience. (Amazon + 99% = massive females…yes.)

With close ties to the art world, both women are celebrated for tapping into the intellectual exercises of their time to interpret form for the bodies of the 99%. As a very close friend of Dali, Schiaparelli took clothing design beyond utilitarian or decorative, into dreamy 3D surrealism for her image-play and coupled this with techno-firsts for fabric innovation, including “cellophane, straw and even glass.” A long list of firsts, “taking art off the cave walls” belong to Schiaparelli from runway shows with lithe bodies as models set to art and music, perfume brand platforms, wrap dresses and the concept of sportswear separates. Prada, much like Warhol, is more an architect and mix-master of pop-culture, working with artists with her Fondazione Prada, designing fashion more for the cerebral vs. corporal body, always mining and re-configuring iconic concepts from the pool of fashion history, most notably Schiaparelli, as this exhibit reveals. However, I did find myself wondering exactly how this exhibit inspired the masses, as befitting its honorees, and in the words of one doyenne of Vogue and the Met’s Costume Institute, Diana Vreeland, I found myself questioning its presentation, potential and impact, mouthing off with her big red lips her own trademark question to provoke and transcend before suggesting something highly creative and enticing: “Why Don’t You…?”

Both women, inspiring, game changing. “So Why Don’t You love the exhibit?,” was the question among friends exiting through the gift shop. Here is why. Image-making as power is no longer just in the hands of celebrated clothing designers, myth-making artists, bible-thumpers, Hollywood, mass media or politicians to be spoon-fed down simplistically to the masses. That kind of top-down, two-dimensional, industry blindfolded reality met Tinsel Town in the tin foil reflection of Warhol’s Factory a long time ago. Now playing with imagery, reality, pixels and art history for that matter is at the fingertips of Everyman, including every closet-style blogger, street-styler, photo tumblr and scrapbookish Pinner. The invitation to interpret, record, play and create based upon the daily experience is the party of social media and the art-party of the year. A little earthy, a little unpredicatable to involve the viewers in the conversation, but oh so necessary.

And the next “New Aesthetics”? Beyond 2D dualism, the red and green cellophane paper-goggled 3D already googled itself and woke up to its 4-D reality. The multi-dimensional masses are co-creating their desires daily and for any intriguing “impossible conversation” discourse worthy of attention must have the public as invited participants. Interactive in the Moment hits everyone’s pleasure keys. The premise of a time and space-less experience dialogue between two of the century’s most creative females, now when women’s issues are so pertinent to our Future, promised much more than just clothing pinned to walls and mannequins as seen in any H&M. Paired with a rather static film, the promise drowned in just another old-fashioned costume exhibit formula. Of the all New Aesthetic’s exciting medium-boundary pushing possibilities, as Wired writer, Bruce Sterling enthralled, based upon the talking heads at SBSW’s talk, #sxaesthetic, “Well, we’ll once again be living in heroic times!” 

Impossible Conversations between Heroines can be Heroic.

It was “heroic” to invent a new color, as Schiaparelli did with “Shocking pink,” however, for those of us with dreamy digital eyes set to a 4D visual universe, it is no longer “shocking” nor “heroic” to place a shoe on one’s head, a mouth on a dress, expose some skin or paint dream landscapes on a canvas, or even sculpt a static museum wall scenario. (and no Victoria, wearing pink was not invented by Victoria Secret.)

Our flat words and concepts of 3D worlds are melting between our two physical eyes. The “nouveau aesthetic” and “imaginary conversations” beyond Time, is an evolving conversation style between humans, something beyond materials, the medium or even pushing concepts of space as one of the proponents of “New Aesthetics,” Clive Head portrays. Yes, in his painting, we see the woman contemplating at the coffee shop, and we know the real vision here is what is seen inside her head. The genius here is how what is in the viewer’s head is a vital a part of the artwork and experience. That for us, is a key component of “Art Off the Cave Walls.” Inviting the expansive experience.

A friend at “Impossible Conversations,” pointed to an exhibited dress as belonging to someone he knew, a noted couture collector. He related how the woman would tell him stories of bribing longshoremen at the docks with liquor to get her Schiaparellis off the boat from Europe in time for parties that evening. That film? That party? That woman recalling dancing in those shoes conversing with a woman in an imagined Prada suit in an executive suite in the year 2020?  A shared Pinterest of favorite Prada shoes or Schiap hats and stories from favorite parties co-created the Public? Now that would be Talking. Art. Heads. of a New Aesthetic.

Back on earthtime, on that meme’d day of May 6, for our panel, I chose art and brand experts, whose work in art, brand, film and experiences push the boundaries of engagement and human potential. And for the record, I can trace my own “talking art head” provenance here, from both the shocking pink Schiaparelli hat I was thrilled to find in a thrift shop at age 13 and also my oft-proselytized, fervent belief since around the same time, that the art of the future would be collaborative.

Sponsored by Metropolis magazine and Kiwi Arts, our panelists included Lina Srivastava, social innovation strategist who has worked with UNESCO, the World Bank and Oscar-winning films; Renata Lopes-Merriam, formerly VP at The PLUM Network and VP, Associate Publisher at Interview Magazine; Jonathan Porcelli, Project Director in the contemporary art world, including productions with artist, Spencer Tunick, international museums, HBO and the BBC; Nicholas Coblence, who worked with the Ashes and Snow exhibition and brands such as Chanel, Assouline, The Museum of Modern Art and The Guggenheim Foundation and Serena Saitas, Founder of REAL, a consumer insights and brand building company. We reviewed art and current events globally, where public performance and street art is on the rise and how artists, museums, urban interventions, interactive events and the media now intersect with marketing agents and non-profits to engage audiences. Our first proclamation?

Attention shoppers, “The art is off the cave walls.”

In a brief history of image making here on Earth, we’ve gone from collective cave-paintings to elicit a meal to elevating soup cans and detergent boxes to icons by provocateurs such as Warhol, who straddled both fine and commercial art. Robert Indiana pioneered feeding huge emotion-laden concepts like LOVE and DIE back to the public as abstracts, friendly and graphic avatar faces reflecting the evolutionary invitation to play with “givens” such as concepts and words rather than just accept them as edicts handed down. The multi-sensory overload emerging from that time, the late 1950’s and 60’s TV, radio and access to far corners of the globe effectively turned our experience into a micro-macro, Super Cell Processor of Info. Warhol and Indiana stirred and distilled that cocktail like Mad Men.

 Our urges, word squiggles and desired-meals R US,  Superheroes, Super Brands and Gods moving mountains.

Thankfully, we have evolved from one man bible-thumping via “Sermons on the Mount” to “Go tell it on the Mountain” to imaginary Everyman turned Superhero who could move mountains by saving the world from its own destruction. Now art moves from the screen to the mountain itself, from singular edicts on high into masses showing up together, as equals, with no rhetoric, just naked to experience communion, truth and art as seen here in one of Spencer Tunick’s “happenings.” The Internet Mountain, that seductive fountain of Immortality and Info, kissed by the collective Cloud at its summit, is now a personal and collective art people engage in Everyday, often with their own bodies as the medium, tools of expression and experience. 4D and beyond.

 Conjure magic.

Art began to transcend experience, a community ritual to conjure magic and now it seems “the collective we” are exactly at this place again collectively. Artists, Presidents, business, New Aestheticians, Facebookers and Twitterers all chattering want the same thing. Coupled with the “can’t-put-it-back-in-the-box” All-Knowing transparency. Which may be why now is the time to align for the betterment of the world community. If you want to entertain, sell widgets or compel the saving of a planet we now are compelled to show both our transparent grassroots common humanity as well as our willingness to perform magic. To go beyond “reality,” to engender emotion and commonality, we are inspired by Star Wars holograms of Princess Leia and most recently, blurring the cinematic and the visceral, The Hologram Known As Tupak Shakur, who “performed” at SXSW. Superheroes to save the Earth are us.

Perhaps one of my most favorite brand experiences, the precursor to Tupak, was the larger than life Knicks star player Carmelo Anthony as a 3-story high wall of mist, water holograms and 3D-mapping projections across NYC’s pier 54 buildings in 2011, created for Nike by the Klip Collective. Over 2,500 people gathered to experience this launch of a new basketball shoe, the Melo 8. Slick, almost-religious and game genre-shifting for the 2D ad world and the 3D event world.

And in that eternal now moment of art,”beyond the looking glass,” my own mobile phone photo from the Met Costume Institute exhibit, the material words of Schiaparelli with an image of herself upside down and reflected like she was, a tornado Princess Leia, live again, re-interpreted continue the conversation.

 Do it yourself. The magic “red carpet” for 15 minutes of Fame is social media.

From Grandmothers to football teams, looking at self, reflecting and creating art to make a statement and join community, as recently many did by wearing a hoodie to support justice for Trayvon Martin, art is iconic and accessible. Created to engender a larger social justice result, much like its roots on the cave wall, yet it is no less a transformative experience in the “wall-less” space of the clouds. Warhol’s “witness”-replicating iconic imagery is now in everyone’s brain and toolbox.

With the passion of a Ghandi, we can engender disruption of our collective status and social quo, a beginning step as “part of the New Aesthetic involves inventing (and disrupting) the connections between computational media,” wrote Ian Bogost in The Atlantic in his article, “The New Aesthetic Needs to Get Weirder.”

I agree, with our own brains actually being “computational media” now, and ask, like a visionary ocular migraine, how do these 15 minutes of Fame not only get weirder, but really evolve us to not only see differently but to act to change our world for the better, after “the weird thing” everyone is doing for 15 minutes of attention? As Lina Srivastava asked on our panel, how do we use disruptions in art to build ethos and shorten the time between public action and political change?

Messages beamed Beyond Large. Larger than Life, Earth and Beyond that which is Google Map.

Invites to see larger, journey deeper, range from JR’s eyes of the disenfranchised placed upon their roofs to “Ashes and Snows”‘ traveling Nomadic Museum with its monumental photos of man and nature in communion. I wonder why then, when we send light pixel invitation announcements into space, we are surprised when we get answers as beautiful birthday cakes aka crop circles in wheat fields? So those space peoples live large and send rather fancy RSVPs via landscaping, it just goes to show the New Creativity is a growing ever-expanding Multiverse.

And…what if crop circles or the “Conspiracy Keanu Reeves” meme are really just pre-party-games intended to wake-us up to the actual Event, our multi-dimensional,post-Apocalypse 2012 creative selves? (Cool. Coming and bearing gifts.)

And when mainstream media gets a hold of memes, even red-carpet action such as Angelina’s dainty turned-out leg becomes public art-making. Dali’s red lobster meme meets a crop circle postcard message back to Space, in case anyone is listening, “We are having some fun down here.” And its not just about the visuals. Talking head, word poet Haiku-ers on Twitter, such as @M42Speranza’s beautiful birds in flight, have turned the 3-part, 3D Surrealist Exquisite Corpse party game of visuals and Robert Indiana’s pop-art into a Tumblr and emerged A Word Baccanalia. Even The Poetry Foundation poses New Aesthetic prose on word-play here. Warhol-ness is the 99% meme-ing and streaming into living rooms now.

Mash-up and Morphing-out Temples to art, commerce and desire to save the planet, ourselves…and our technology machines to record it all.

Artist provocateurs increasingly set-up shop and stage to mix metaphors, genres, relationships and locations like interesting guests at the dinner table… at the simplest level, as attempted by “Impossible Conversations.” From far-flung locations to bringing the Past squarely in front of the Future, look at Theaster Gates’ choirs and temporary temples of recycled urban deritus mixing temple, church, shanty and museum all at once for the Whitney Biennial 2009. Look at “Ashes and Snow,” steered by one of our panelists, Nicholas Coblence, which created a cathedral from shipping crates as temple to the high art of humans communicating with “wild” animals. And it’s no longer just about the visuals, for sound, look at DJ Spooky’s multi-media performance work in Antarctica, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antartica or for scent, look at The Clarimonde Project by Lucy Raubertas, indie-perfumers creating new scents based on an 19^th century love story. With its own blog, Facebook and Twitter posts, the characters and story are being rendered Timeless and worn on wrists all over the world, it is all about the Immersive boundary-less Experience.

Gerhardt Richter pixelated the traditional stained glass windows of Cologne Cathedral, perhaps a fitting comment to the Renaissance ideal of artist commissions and the new “state” and ownership of art. However, as the “where” of art is no longer cathedrals, museums or galleries, and it exists both live and on our busy boxes, we are active participants in its commentary, be that Occupy protests, red carpet galas or G8 summits. Hmm, can we imagine folks are compelled to converse in the streets for the reason there is less than 500 views of the G8 Summit on Youtube compared to endless red carpet award show image absorption?

The Metropolitan Museum’s live cam coverage of “Impossible Conversations” by major media giant Conde Nast, was unexpected art in of itself, turning Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” upside down, as the usual “behind-the-scenes” cat calls and impossible conversations of the paparazzi shouting at the celebs became surreal commentary to the Hollywood gods and goddesses lithely, gingerly braving the red carpet steps. “Katherine, Katherine look over here, Jesus! she’s not looking at anything!”

In our red carpet-obsessed culture, fame and identity, formerly known as “I am observed, therefore I am,” now is reset to “I observe, therefore it is.” Paparazzi have evolved into Everyman Instagramers R Us. The advent of surveillance cameras everywhere, Big Brother Male Gaze, levels the playing field of gender attraction as in even men now get a taste of “what it feels like for a girl,” as futurist, Madeline Ashley puts it. The Seer is the Seen. Beyond mere thinking implying existence, contemplating one’s own navel or God-figure in privacy, everyone becomes paparazzi aka “God or Goddess” of the world as they see it vs. the powers that be. This new credo and power of documentation and possession also makes “the desired” into “things at the center of being” which is actually also the definition of the new trend in philosophy, called Object-Oriented Ontology or OOO for short. Greg Borenstein, a proponent of OOO, says “I believe that the New Aesthetic is actually striving towards a fundamentally new way of imagining the relations between things in the world.”  “What is it like to be a bonobo or a satellite or a pixel?” adds Bogost.  If I document, I create, therefore I am?

Our panel added, “Art shapes identity, in things and experiences. Defining authentic self in art, nature and multiple dimensions is now our shared collective stories and co-created reality. These are realities we must take responsibility for shaping, especially what happens after the art is created and experienced.”  The constructs of the Game here on Earth and beyond are just not what they used to be. Given that, the panelists all asked for more than just more “weirdness,” seeing the potential for inspiration, change and creation, we asked for more than just the 15 minutes. How exactly will the 15 minutes continue to shape our reality?

Let’s visit 4D space again. Science and religions both say the beginning there was Sound. According to the world’s most ancient language, Sanskrit,”OM” pronounced and in its 3D form is”AUM,” the beginning, middle and end, the sound of creation awakened to itself. “Ahhh,” the first sound of OM, is like Awe or an Aha! moment. Been there. “Oooo” is the middle sound coming after, the sound of pleasure. We humans meme “oooo” all the time, in response to stimulation. It’s time to be squarely in the third sound of OM, the “mmmm” the matter, the materialization, satisfaction, the completion, the coming full circle in all thoughts and actions. The 4D, 4th sound is called Turiya, the sound of silence, the sound between things or repetitions, the ritual motion, evolving revolutions of our circular planet and universe. Interestingly, the letters A, U and M also stand for the mantra ‘Tat Twam Asi’ ( ‘That Thou Art’ ), “Art” equal to “Being.” This “I am That” self-knowledge of an artist’s relationship beyond Awe or Novelty, to the full sitting in a “responsible driver’s seat” in the cycle of creation, the full potential of the “New Creativity.”

In many ways, like the famed Schiaparelli and Dali dress peeling away its material layers, the “weirdness” of art’s greatest intention is to set the stage for stellar performances of simple 1 on 1 meditations, an honoring of silence and the high art itself is the dissolving the separation of actual forms or designations of observer, observed, art, artist…things.

Play with points of light and attention levels the playing field, placing it squarely in the reality of the common heart, the common calm, the “universe” in common. The sound of the world humming in harmony. Yeah, something like “Heart Art,” but I didn’t say that, it’s way too New Age for me.;-) But aren’t we all quite done with cynicism, criticism and schisms anyway? Square man-made pixels can and do exist in a round world, where the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In 4D that translates to:

“Being is Everywhere, so Take Care.”

Have Some Fun. Games and Predicaments. Et tu? Art Thou Changing Happenings?