3D+SOCIAL ART: EMPOWERING SOCIAL CHANGE BY LUCY BECKWITH AND SIV SIVASAMY FOUNDING MEMBER OF MAYFAIR COLLECTIVE
The facilitation of user-generated art perfectly reflects and expresses the way Social Media Culture works. Digital citizens are encouraged to engage, create and share continuously.
This is exemplified in the images-sharing universe of Instagram, Whatsapp, FB Messenger, Twitter and others where images, emojis and gifs, animated or otherwise, are shared in the hundreds of millions.
US artist Robodrone reflects and expresses this new reality. Giphy, the world’s most famous search engine for gifs and emojis directly accessed for immediate sharing from giant social media messages platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, FB Messenger and WhatsApp has given Robodrone an artist channel to showcase his gifs and emojis. Their novelty has attracted almost 20 million views in less than two months. Robodrone’s social media enabling art, at first glance, evokes Renaissance artist Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ meeting Faberge, Belle Epoque jewellery to the Empress of Russia. It can be viewed as showing the boundary of the old analogue world simultaneously acting as a bridge to the new digital one. Social Media Tech giants Twitter and Facebook/Instagram have recognised how well the art reflects the new digital culture they are helping create and have requested the Hashtag Queens artwork on loan – Twitter for its annual event in 2018 and Facebook/Instagram at their London headquarters in 2019.
Contini Contemporary art gallery, located in London’s Mayfair and run by pioneering modern art partners Fulvio Grannochia and Cristian Contini is exhibiting Robodrone’s ground-breaking art until February 2020. In a radical twist, people entering the art exhibit are no longer visitors. They are visiting artists instead, who are encouraged and enabled by Robodrone and the gallery to create value-added art in the matrix of the Hashtag Queens throne and share it by live – posting to their friends globally via social media apps. This is the making of the new art form now known as 3D+ Social Art.
Giphy, the world’s best-known search engine and data server for gifs and emojis are exhibiting the animated artworks and providing direct access to over 50 Robodrone gifs and emojis on its Robodrone artist channel to social media users on partner platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp and Viber. Over 18 million people have viewed and shared Hashtag Queens gifs in the past two months. This new art form has given people a new and direct virtual access to Robodrone’s art. It is the wave of the future.