Twitter + Art = Twart?
Saturday February 28, 2009
I read with interest this week an article by Ruth Jamieson in The Guardian extolling the virtues of Twitter for us visual arts types. It largely confirmed what I've known for nearly a year now: Twitter is a great way to stay virtually connected with friends and professional contacts. It's fast, painless and has a Zen-like 140-character limit that disallows users from overwhelming other users with lengthy monologues.
I'd like to take a minute and explain why Twitter works so well for "our" crowd. Artists? Typically work alone. Arts writers? Ditto. Freelancers in general? Ditto to the nth degree. That's a lot of solitude and, yes, there are (rare) times that I miss working in an office--if only for the water-cooler chat sessions. I now keep a Twitter addon in my Firefox browser that feeds me a steady diet of chatty "tweets" from fellow artists and writers throughout my work day. (If there is any downside to this, it's that break times are never synchronized; when I say "steady diet," I really mean steady.)
Additionally, a number of Twitterers that I follow work in art museums, aggregate exhibition news or teach art history. It's a hoot, for example, to watch the Brooklyn Museum trade comments with MoMA, augmented by thoughts from Jeffrey at The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. Conservation tweets come in from Richard in Indianapolis and Sarah at the J. Paul Getty Museum. If I want to know what's opening in Japan or Australia--and I do--there are TokyoArtBeat and ArtsHub cluing me in.
Aside from the obvious social benefits, the nicest part about Twitter is that I, too, am able to announce new blog posts (like this one), new material, popular pictures and articles of the day, and my updated-weekly Jobs, Calls for Papers and Symposia announcements. (Self-promotion on Twitter is fine, just so long as that's not ALL one does.)
So, Twitter is great and everyone with a congenial bone in his or her body should try it, but I must, must take issue with the word "twart." Does no one take vulgar slang into account before sending these coined phrase balloons out onto the Internet? Honestly, people ...
If You'd Like to Try Twitter
- What Is Twitter? - from About.com Web Trends
- Join - at Twitter.com
- Amina Bech
- Art Bomb
- Arts Hub Australia
- Asian Art Museum
- Auction Saboteur
- Brooklyn Museum
- Cincinnati Art Museum
- FLo Rian
- Honolulu Academy of Art
- Hunter Museum of American Art
- J. Paul Getty Museum
- Mattress Factory
- Museum of Modern Art
- Palmer Museum of Art
- Richard McCoy
- Tacoma Art Museum
- Tokyo Art Beat (非公式版)
- Yoko Ono
Know of any other Twitter feeds art lovers should be following? Leave a comment below!
Comments
A few more I might recommend include:
Art21
PS1
NY Art Beat
Tyler Green
Christina Ray of Glowlab
Hrag Vartanian
Barry Hoggard
Jen Bekman
Vasili Kaliman
Thanks for your interesting and informative post.
Thanks very much, Debra–great list! You know, I used to follow Tyler but stopped when it became clear that he didn’t tweet or follow back little people like me. I always enjoy his writing, but reverted to RSS feeds only when it sunk in that my Twitter love was unrequited. (*Le sigh*) Twittiquette, huh? Like any of us need one more thing to weigh on our overburdened heads …
A few more art twitterers to follow:
An Xiao (thatwaszen)
edwardwinkleman
Paddy Johnson (artfagcity)
Ann Gordon (tryharderart)
Rebecca Taylor
Sophia Louisa
Menachem Wecker
cmonstah
Allison Agsten
David Ross
The Flog
I agree with Debra’s list and would add:
http://www.twitter.com/sfmoma
http://www.twitter.com/lacma
http://www.twitter.com/daross140
http://www.twitter.com/dincandela
http://www.twitter.com/smartsculture
http://www.twitter.com/artfagcity
http://www.twitter.com/artsnob
http://www.twitter.com/heardsmuseum
http://www.twitter.com/thatwaszen
And of course, feel free to follow me at:
http://www.twitter.com/rebeccataylorLA
Have you heard of http://www.smarthistory.org?
The professors that founded/run the site have twitter accounts!
https://twitter.com/drszucker
https://twitter.com/bethrharris
Thanks so much, everyone! Please, keep the suggestions coming (hint: I’m compiling a bona fide, running list).
We tweet art openings that appear on our website
http://twitter.com/artabase
Thanks artwhirled!
Our Twitter site’s taken off better than we’d hoped (www.twitter.com/TheArtistsWeb….we try and include as many art-related sites as possible covering all spectrums and tastes. Do have a look and give us your feedback!
I’m so glad I signed up for your newsletter, and you mentioned Twitter, Shelley. I just joined it (I’m slow at dipping toes in the social networking phenomenon) and was at a loss for who to follow – except for a couple of comedians I hope will entertain me. Thanks for all the great ideas!
These new tools – in addition to making communication easier – can push art in new directions. Check out the tweets from a collaborative artwork/motivational video series “Killin’ It with Paul Crik”
https://twitter.com/paulcrik
Great list! A couple more to recommend:
1. https://twitter.com/thangdynasty
2. https://twitter.com/fadwebsite
Twitter Art/Twart
This is just a name that has been made up to describe creative practices that already exist and have done for many years.
Just saw this great post and I would like to introduce something complety else: Arty Tweets.
Use your Twitter Profile Picture for your artistic expression and support this with a tweet.
The creative expression is a slogan as an image in your profile picture, just a single image which is supported by your tweet or something else.
The only prerequisite is the use of your Twitter profile picture.
Then you send a tweet and make a screenshot of the tweet (e.g. by screen hunter).
This screenshot is uploaded to for example Mobypicture.com.
Your work of art is complete when you have sent a tweet to @ArtyTweet including a link to your screenshot.
Afterwards, you change your profile picture back to the normal one.
The accompanying tweet and the screenshot will then be published on http://artytweet.posterous.com/ .
We just get started but we hope we will receive a lot of Arty Tweets.
Do you create one?
Cheers!
another personal favorite of mine: @rob_sheridan (lots of nice photography and some drawings as well as general artsy dorkiness)
Our new Twitter for art lovers: http://twitter.com/ArtKnowledge