Idea Lab

Highlights and Pitfalls of Virtual Street Corners Project

by John Ewing
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

We're just winding down my Knight News Challenge project, Virtual Street Corners, and haven't had time to sort through all the recorded materials and debrief the participants, but I wanted to share some initial thoughts and reactions. The most encouraging takeaway from the project was the enthusiastic response it received. It seems to have struck a nerve and could be well worthy of further investigation. The piece is widely accessible without being overly simplistic, with the potential for opening up complex social interactions. On the other hand, there were also various aspects that fell short of my expectations. The project...

• July 7, 2010
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Virtual Street Corners Adds Journalists, Places Ads for Launch

by John Ewing
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

We are just two weeks out from the install date of Virtual Street Corners and our publicity campaign is gaining momentum. The project will connect two neighborhoods in Boston via live video connection in public places. We've been picked up a lot on the blogosphere, on CBC radio in Canada, and The Atlantic magazine came out today with a feature that put Virtual Street Corners on the front page of its website. Within hours I had an email from Israel offering me money and assistance to set up the same project between Tel Aviv and the West Bank. That...

• May 18, 2010
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Contrasting Boston Neighborhoods for Virtual Street Corners

by John Ewing
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Things have started to kick into gear for Virtual Street Corners, my project that will connect the Boston towns of Brookline and Roxbury by live 24-hour video connection. At this point the most time-consuming task is community organizing as we create excitement for the project and identify groups who will use the installation to generate dialogue between the two neighborhoods. The project requires us to draw on the resources of each community as we solicit merchants for space, identify community groups who use the portal, introduce technology and plan the aesthetics of the installation itself. Dudley Square is a commercial...

• March 30, 2010
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How Virtual Street Corners Fits with History of Art-Telecom Projects

by John Ewing
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Below is a guest post from George Fifield, director and founder of Boston Cyberarts Inc., an organization that is a fiscal sponsor of Virtual Street Corners. He and I are working closely together on the project, and here he helps contextualize Virtual Street Corners from a curator's perspective. Fifield is a distinguished curator in new media, a writer about art and technology, and a teacher at Rhode Island School of Design and Massart. Read more about his work and view more of his writing here. Art and Telecommunication Throughout time, Artists have greeted new communications technologies with great enthusiasm. With...

• March 8, 2010
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Finding Common Ground Between Citizen Art and Citizen Journalism

by John Ewing
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Comparisons are rarely drawn between the fields of art and journalism. But most of last month's work on my Knight Challenge project, Virtual Street Corners, was spent networking and conducting research into these areas. Since I will be hiring several citizen journalists, I've been reading up on that topic, and thinking about the similarities with the art world, which is something I'm much more familiar with. I've been contemplating whether there are lessons that can be transferred from one to the other. One of the most obvious connections between citizen journalism and community-based artists is the shared desire to create...

• January 15, 2010
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Virtual Street Corners Aims to Engage Public, Connect Neighbors

by John Ewing
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

One of the primary challenges of any community art project is how to engage the audience. If no one is lured to participate, the dynamism of the piece is lost. Virtual Street Corners, my Knight-funded community art project, benefits from the fact that there is an element of symbolism due to the respective histories of the two neighborhoods we are trying to connect. As I noted in my grant overview, "The Greater Boston neighborhoods of Brookline and Roxbury are 2.4 miles apart, yet there is little interaction between them because of divisions of race and class." This helps create interest...

• November 30, 2009
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Virtual Street Corners Connects Neighborhoods and People in Boston

by John Ewing
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Virtual Street Corners, our Knight-funded project, is scheduled to be installed in Boston between June 8th and June 30th of this year. We have formed an exciting collaboration with the Boston Cyberarts festival, which will be our fiscal sponsor. I thought I would use my first post on Idea Lab to describe the project and fill everyone in on the work and thinking that has already gone into the piece. For those not familiar with the project, I'll offer a quick description. Large glass storefronts in two Greater Boston area neighborhoods, Brookline and Roxbury, will be transformed into video screens,...

• October 16, 2009
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