Sunday, July 12, 2009
Brits atop a plinth
posted at 10:03 AM |
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For a hundred days, beginning on July 6, and running 24 hours a day, a different person will sit atop the 168-year-old Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square for one hour and talk, read or do whatever by way of making a living portrait of the UK. Since the feed is live, one assumes that the 2400 people will cover a whole gamut from enthralling to boring to offensive to who-knows-what. It's a brainchild of sculptor Antony Gormley, by the way. It may sound goofy and pointless but it's absolutely mesmerizing, as pointed out by Sarah Brown and Emma Freud on Twitter. Of course people are asking whether it's art or not, but who cares? Like the diaries of that guy in the midwest U.S., it's a real record of real life at this moment in the universe's time.
The camera moves around now and then so you also get a look at T.Square and the people milling around. It's right down a bit from St. Martin's in the Fields and the National Gallery and 10 Downing Street - so many fascinating places in the heart of one of the great cities of the world. The website puts up a headshot of the current plinth-occupier along with a short bio and one assumes they've screened the applicants (nearly 25,000 as of this writing).
The website has many features including the ability to look people up after they've spent their hour atop the plinth. And a "plinth postcard" that lets you digitially put yourself or someone else or even your cat up there, and send the card.
Twitterers can follow the project (@oneandother) and the plinth itself (@Plinthwatch). (You can also read stories on it in the Guardian , the Times and the Independent.) The live feed is at "One & Other." And let me include a warning/proviso that you may find this utterly ridiculous and/or boring but far more likely addicting and mesmerizing.
The camera moves around now and then so you also get a look at T.Square and the people milling around. It's right down a bit from St. Martin's in the Fields and the National Gallery and 10 Downing Street - so many fascinating places in the heart of one of the great cities of the world. The website puts up a headshot of the current plinth-occupier along with a short bio and one assumes they've screened the applicants (nearly 25,000 as of this writing).
The website has many features including the ability to look people up after they've spent their hour atop the plinth. And a "plinth postcard" that lets you digitially put yourself or someone else or even your cat up there, and send the card.
Twitterers can follow the project (@oneandother) and the plinth itself (@Plinthwatch). (You can also read stories on it in the Guardian , the Times and the Independent.) The live feed is at "One & Other." And let me include a warning/proviso that you may find this utterly ridiculous and/or boring but far more likely addicting and mesmerizing.
Labels: amazements, u.k.
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