Dear Rhizome,
Firstly, thank you for the ride everyone.
Then, a thought: There's something about the whole proposal/open call culture that doesn't feel right for art. When an idea gains too much coherence—and that's what a proposal scheme guides us to create—it's hard to see how it still can be exciting as an artistic gesture.
Bonus tip for future jurors: The decision process gets way more complicated if you end up spying on contestants' social media profiles.
#Winning
Deanna & Jack, Well, Actually: a journal of vernacular criticism!
PDF-based quarterly open to "criticism as it exists in the field, nuance welcomed but not required!" H/t to Brian Droitcour. Edited by Deanna Havas & Jack Kahn.
This has everything I love: the word "actually," an exclamation mark, and a very brief description.
Ben Grosser, Music Obfuscator.
The Music Obfuscator will enable users to hide music from Content ID, the listening algorithms that idenfity copyrighted music on sites like Vimeo and YouTube, flagging every match for automatic muting or removal even in cases of fair use or use with permission.
Actually, this sounds super useful!
Martha Hipley, untitled Twitter hack.
A proposal to use the Rhizome grant to hire someone to hack two inactive social media accounts so that the artist can have the usernames for herself, thereby unifying her personal brand.
It's like I'm advocating Rhizome to give money to a landlord so she can hire muscle to evict some random tenants.
Lena NW and Julia Kunberger, Viral.
A game that parodies celebrity status games (i.e. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (app), The Urbz (PS2)) but focuses on the concept of becoming an internet celebrity via social media.
Greetings, I come from Angry Birds land and I want to invest $500 in your crazy-ass game.
Angela Washko, BANGED.
A website for testimonials and reviews by women who have had sex with Roosh V, self-proclaimed pick-up artist and author of BANG: The Pickup Bible as well as Bang Ukraine, Don't Bang Denmark, and Day Bang.
Kinda like three of my fave things combined: Cheaters + 30 Days of Pick-up Art + Heart of Darkness.
Love,
The full shortlist with complete proposals can be found here.
The Rhizome Commissions program is supported, in part, by funds from the Jerome Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
[Thoughts on the open call format, or how the Microgrants might work differently in the future? Let us know in the comments or drop a line to zachary.kaplan@rhizome.org]
