TransCoding - von Intellektuellenkunst zu partizipatorischer Kultur

The interdisciplinary multimedia art and research project TransCoding enfolds over time and across a digital participatory community inviting reflection, creation, self-empowerment, communication and active participation across pre-conceived borders. Yet, it can also be pinned down to concrete artworks: a multimedia solo show for one performer, live-electronics and visuals and an audiovisual installation. With TransCoding we wish to encourage participation in art and generate a new audience by initialising an online/offline community that picks up on a given frame in an artistic, social and interactive way using every day media of participatory culture. Through this online platform we hope for input across boundaries that will show its influence in the 2nd and 3rd 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 high art. and as a final step 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 world that can exist and travel independently from any performing artist. By offering participatory culture via web 2.0 as part of our arts project we invite an often for high art unavailable audience (age 20-30) to speak out, share a discourse and take influence on the approaching art project. Practice based arts research here is not just about the artistic process also 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 discuss and express one`s identity, achieve personal empowerment and to further a sense of their belonging to a peer group by participating in an arts project. TransCoding proclaims a change in perspective from a retrospective academic investigation of an artwork to an art project in which a digital participatory community challenges the unquestioned dominance of the position of professional artists and humanities scholars. Key Research Questions: How can we establish an online/offline community that picks up on the topic of new media art and cross-over culture and wants to be actively involved in the discourse? Will this lead to a fruitful interactive exchange between the digital producers, fans and contributors and the researchers/artists that add meaning to both? What kind of strategies do we need to apply to further and unlock the creativity of the community for maximum benefit? What is the role of the artist/researcher within this community? And based on the interactive exchange with the global and local community, and our artistic research, will we be able to create an

The artistic research project TransCoding From Highbrow Art to Participatory Culture (PEEK AR 259-G21), engaged with the topic of participatory culture, using social media in the context of artistic practice to involve an online audience in the making of several multimedia artworks. One of the goals was to thus make highbrow art, that is, contemporary classical music and multimedia art, more accessible to a broader public. The main target group was an internet-literate young audience, mostly drawn from popular culture, who might not necessarily be considered the typical audience for classical contemporary multimedia performances. The blog at https://what-ifblog.net served as the central social media and content base, and also as a contact point for the projects community. Community members were directly involved in the genesis of TransCodings artworks via their creative contributions. The project had three main artistic outcomes: The artwork Slices of Life for violin, video and soundtrack that was created by main artist and head of project, Barbara Lüneburg, and included major contributions by community members. The community substantially influenced topic, visual and musical aesthetics of the artwork. In the audiovisual installation Read me that could be personalised for individual community members, Lüneburg shared the artistic authority with her users. The team considers the total of all artworks on the projects social media sites a participatory artwork in itself. TransCoding facilitated interactions between the participating members and the professional artist(s) through calls for entries channelled via the projects social media hub. Artistic research, and with it the process of doing art and the artwork itself, were at the heart of this investigation. Lüneburg and her team applied findings and theories from media sociology and cultural science to the communicative and artistic process; they investigated their applicability and meaning in the arts, and their impact on the resulting artworks itself, on the community they had gathered, and on the role of the artist. In TransCoding, artistic research went beyond the investigation of the artistic process, and expanded into new contexts. By offering participatory culture via web 2.0 as part of the arts creation, Lüneburg and her team invited contributors to speak out, and to share a discourse about and exert influence on the artworks. They employed principles of participatory culture in the communication and creative process, thus redefining the (commonly hierarchic) relationship between artist and community as one of permeability and mutual influence. In her book on the project (download link: https://bit.ly/2B6ap6u), Lüneburg and her co-worker sociologist Kai Ginkel additionally debate discourses on qualitative methodologies in artistic research and ethnographic sociology, in an attempt to compare the construction of knowledge produced by the respective fields.