TransCoding– From ‘Highbrow Art’ to Participatory Culture

TransCoding– From ‘Highbrow Art’ to Participatory Culture is an arts-based research project conceived of by the artist and researcher Dr.Barbara Lüneburg (project leader), funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF (PEEK AR 259-G21) and situated at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz/Austria. The project will run by an international team of four artists, one programmer and three researchers from 1.2.2014-30.1.2017. The blog http://www.what-ifblog.net is the participatory online platform of TransCoding.

With TransCoding we wish to encourage participation in art and generate a new audience by
• initialising an online/offline community starting with http://www.what-ifblog.net that picks up on a given frame in an artistic, social and interactive way using every day media of participatory culture such as facebook, smartphone, blog, youtube, vimeo, twitter etc. Through this online platform we hope for input across boundaries that will show its influence in the second and third step of the project.

• creating a multimedia-solo-show for one violinist, live-electronics and video aiming for performances at festivals and concert podia. Influenced by or in exchange with the community we would like to explore a given topic by crossing between popular culture and so-called high art. (Performances are planned at festival “Ultraschallfestival” Berlin and ZKM Karlsruhe/Germany (Center for Art and Media technology) in 2016/17.

• and by generating an audiovisual installation that will reflect on and evaluate the artistic and scientific results as well as the contributions of the community putting it together to an interactive artwork that can exist and travel independently from any performing artist (first exhibition at Schmiede Hallein in September 2015).

By offering participatory culture via web 2.0 as part of our arts project we invite to speak out, share a discourse and take influence on the approaching art project. Here, practice based arts research is not just about the artistic process reaching into new contexts. We apply findings and theories from media sociology to an artistic process and investigate their applicability and meaning in the arts. The (commonly hierarchic) relationship artist and audience/community will be defined to one of permeability and mutual influence.

We hope to raise interest in participation in art as a way to express one’s identity and achieve personal empowerment and to further a sense of their belonging to a peer group by participating in an arts project.

Interested in more information? Please visit the following links or go to our research site transcoding.info:
TransCoding | Methodology
TransCoding | Key Research Questions
TransCoding-What if?| The Team
Back to the blog what if?
This page and its subpages reflects the state of the project by December 2015.