Trust Art - Jason Eppink

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Trust Art is a social platform that is commissioning
ten public artworks over the next year. People are invited to
become shareholders with $1, share with interested friends, and renew culture.

DOCUMENTARY STARRING EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD

A public project led by artist Jason Eppink

Project Proposal

There are over 6.7 billion living, breathing people on this planet, and by 2012, that number is projected to reach 7 billion. What does that mean? How can we understand that number? What does that look like?

The Documentary Starring Everyone in the Entire World will gather video portraits from all over the world, to be assembled in a giant database documentary and displayed, at its premiere, on an immersive, multiple-screen sculpture in Central Park in New York City. Running 24 hours a day at a rate of 3000 videos a second, the documentary will take a full 23 days to complete.

Videos will be collected in four ways:

1. Website: Anyone with an internet connection will be able to access the project website and submit their own video.
2. Videographers: a team of videographers will travel the earth acquiring video portraits.
3. Video Booth: A video booth at the screening location will allow any audience member to instantaneously take their own video portrait and add it to the documentary.
4. Phone software: special software will be written for select smart phones to aid acquisition of video and metadata.

The resulting database documentary will be constructed to accommodate any number of screens, making it adaptable to any presentation scenario, from its permanent home on the project website to outdoor screenings to galleries to museums, and will be available to travel the globe to visit the homes of its subjects. Further, the presentation software will be released under an open source license so anyone can use it and make it better.

Obviously it's impossible to actually gather 6.7 billion individual portraits. Instead, 700,000 short video clips will be gathered, and the documentary will be created in realtime utilizing an algorithm based on embedded demographic metadata (geography, age, sex, ethnicity, etc.) to accurately distribute the photographs based on actual population statistics.

Resources

TOTAL BUDGET: $88,500

Production Equipment: $13500
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cameras: $5000
computers: $7500
hosting: $1000

Screening: $10000
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permits: $2000
construction: $8000

Development: $20000
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web development: $10000
software development: $10000

Staff/Travel: $35000
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photographers: $1000 x10 = $10000
travel: $5000
artist fee/salary: $15000
assistant: $5000

Misc Expenses: $10000
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misc expenses: $10000

Timeline

Summer 2009

Fall 2009

Winter 2009-10

Spring 2010
Trust Art Auction

Locations

Queens, NY

About the Artist

Originally trained as a filmmaker in Los Angeles, Jason quickly realized following this path would have him running coffee for the next few years before doing anything mildly creative. And Jason doesn't know the first thing about coffee. After hosting a long-running public access television show, finishing a few art films, and dabbling in viral video, he finally just gave in to this whole art thing.

Informed by his years in film, as well as an interest in programming and the open source movement (where applicable, Jason distributes his own source code) Jason likes to engage the public with victimless pranks, street art, and interactive sculpture. As a result, much of his recent work falls somewhere in the gray area between art, prank, and activism. Really, Jason just likes to think he is a dude who is making things a little better.

When he's not doing whatever it is you call what he's doing, Jason serves as a curator at a museum in New York City that doesn't want to be publicly associated with any of his mischief.

Jason’s work:
www.jasoneppink.com
www.selfreferentialtitle.com
www.flickr.com/photos/jasoneppink

Artist's Past Work

Pixelator, 2007
An unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists. Since 2003, the MTA has made available for exhibition purposes 80 LED screens located at subway entrances across New York City. Unfortunately, the high cost of exhibiting (an estimated $274,000 per month per screen) prevents most artists from having access to these facilities. While the MTA's effort to create more opportunities for video art exhibition in public spaces is to be commended, selected works remain wholly fixated on commercial goods and media conglomerate events, a short-sighted curatorial choice that regrettably ignores the full potential of these promising exhibition spaces. In an attempt to broaden the scope of MTA's video art series, Pixelator takes video pieces currently on display and diffuses them into a pleasant array of 45 blinking, color-changing squares. Since the project is an anonymous collaboration, the resulting video is almost entirely unplanned and unanticipated, with the original artists helping to create new works of art without any knowledge of their participation.(Translation: Pixelator turns those ugly, blinding video billboard ads into art.)

Light Ripple, 2009
An interactive light sculpture intended for large, late-night social gatherings dominated by blaring sound systems, steady beats, and free-flowing social lubricants. The interaction model is simple: one button, when pressed, initiates a sequence of concentric rings of electric blue light that starts at eye level and spreads onto the ceiling. Instead of shaping or defining the space, the Light Ripple interrupts the space, briefly creating a shared experience as it spreads to 200 square feet over the crowd.

Show All Installations

Take a Seat, 2008
An ongoing series of public furniture installations aimed at increasing the availability of seating options in New York City subway stations. Perfectly functional chairs are rescued from trash piles and reassigned to stations where limited seating options leave subway patrons no choice but to stand for extended periods of time.Take a Seat creates value simply by relocating an object to a new location. Rescued chairs - once liabilities - become assets with little to no effort.Seating solutions installed for Take a Seat are not affixed to MTA property in any way, opening up opportunities for collaboration with subway patrons who, if they take the initiative, may continue the project by installing the chairs in other locations that could benefit from more seating options.

Twenty-First Century Campfire, 2008
An aleatoric light sculpture intended for collective viewing in quiet, low-light, intimate spaces.The Campfire consists of a rescued television set topped by a protruding matrix of PVC pipe that diffuses live television broadcasts into a shifting array of rich colors and abstract shapes. These heavily-researched and targeted messages of consumption -- all provided free of charge by unwitting corporate collaborators -- are filtered into abstraction simply by scattering them inside the PVC piping, rendering the process entirely transparent to the curious observer. The work is intended to be experienced, like an actual campfire, at the center of a small gathering of seated viewers in a dark space. Situated accordingly, the installation becomes a space to be quiet, to meditate, to think, and to sit with others without the constant pressure to sustain conversation. When there is nothing to be said, the Campfire is a returning point, encouraging collective silence and shared meaningful moments of introspection. Ultimately, Twenty-First Century Campfire is an attempt to rescue one of our most deeply ingrained instincts -- the need to sit with others around a glowing source of light -- from the homogenizing three-act structure and the corporate consumption agenda.

Public Wall

Documentary - Left

DOCUMENTARY STARRING EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD

A public project led by artist Jason Eppink

Your Voice

From The Artist

Project Updates

Why All Is Better Than Some [VIDEO]

Pixelator