Twitter has been mentioned before on this blog, notably in the post about social media in the art world but I’ve never given it more than a passing reference. Given the questions, comments and small amount of confusion that seem to surround this particular aspect of social media, I thought it would be sensible to explain a little bit about it and its place in the art world.
People communicate through Twitter in sentences of only 140 characters or fewer, but other than that ‘tweeting’ – sending a message on Twitter – is very like updating your Facebook status or sending an SMS. Anyone on Twitter can read your tweets unless you have a private account, and if people particularly enjoy reading them, or find them useful and informative, they can ‘follow’ you to receive all of your tweets directly on their homepage. Agora Gallery, for example, has at the time of writing 338 followers – 338 people who are interested in keeping track of news stories from the art world by receiving our updates. You can refer to other people using the ‘@’ symbol – for instance, you could talk about or to @Agora_Gallery by including that in a tweet of your own – and you can ‘retweet’ content you found especially appealing or want to share. You can also send direct messages, which are private rather than public, to someone you follow or who follows you.
Twitter started off as a forum for friends and family to keep in touch with one another, as everyone answered the one main question ‘What are you doing?’ Over time, however, Twitter has developed into a much broader news platform – for example, some readers may recall the important role it played in the protests surrounding the Iranian election earlier in the year, when Iranians tweeted to let the rest of the world know what was going on in their country at the time. This change in focus has been marked by a change in the question at the top of the update box on a Twitter homepage, which now asks ‘What’s happening?’ The question is relevant on a local level as well as an international one, of course, and local newspapers and businesses and even services such as police or firefighters use Twitter for spreading and receiving information. Businesses, large and small, also find the live-update site a handy way to tell customers about offers, menus, products and so on. The character limitation is actually an excellent way of encouraging snappy, to-the-point updates and allowing readers to get the gist in a second.
The next question, then, is what Twitter has to do with the art world. Well, firstly, following someone – or indeed several someones – who regularly tweets about art exhibitions, stories and events is an easy way to keep track of what’s going on. You can also pass on the information you found particularly interesting, with comments of your own (although it might mean shortening the original tweet a little; remember that 140 character limit!). Following people who share your interest in art can be a good way to share and compare inspiration, thoughts and problems you’re having with your work. I’ve seen everything from conceptual discussions about the respective merits of different artistic styles to queries about where a particular kind of paint can be found or which tool should be used for a desired effect. Twitter is definitely about interaction as well as the dissemination of information, and artists have been quick to take advantage of that.
More broadly, arts organizations have begun to use Twitter for educational purposes – like the San Diego Opera, which is tweeting the history of opera, 140 characters at a time, or the Broadway show which tweeted its entire performance.
Programs are springing up to bring art more directly to Twitter, too. ‘Tweetbid’ hosted an art auction through Twitter, while Twitdraw allows you to use a program similar to Paint to create what it calls ‘graffiti’ which can then be posted directly to Twitter. (This site should carry a warning, though; it is surprisingly easy to go there just to see what it is, and end up spending much more time than you intended exploring the possibilities and trying to match the image you have in your head, something that takes a while because of the intentionally clumsy ‘paintbrush’.)
There are also sites like Portwiture which take a look at your recent tweets and match them up with pictures from Flickr to create a kind of collage of what’s been going on recently in your Twitter world. The results are rather lovely, actually. All of the images illustrating this post are taken from the montage Portwiture created for @Agora_Gallery, and they were chosen because of a connection, which the site describes, between the image and recent content from our tweets. Twitter Mosaic, similar but different, pulls together photos of your followers to present you with a tile-like representation of the people you reach on a daily basis.
There are more conceptual possibilities too. Twistori, with its understated design, provides a gentle insight into the collective Twitter psyche with its constantly updated stream of tweets that contain words like ‘love’, ‘hate’, ‘think’, ‘believe’, ‘feel’ and ‘wish’. Meanwhile Twyric offers you a combination of selected tweets and images from Flickr to create one-line visual poems with the aim of simply ‘providing a background for contemplation’. You can find out more about these projects, and some others, from a Mashable post on the subject.
The great thing about Twitter in relation to artists is that it is a young, growing and developing forum. It provides open opportunities for artists to do what they do best – get creative! On the more prosaic side, of course, it also offers ways of keeping track of art news, getting in touch with fellow artists, and letting people know about you and your work.
Have you used Twitter recently for something art-related? Are you uncertain about it? Curious? Willing to give it a go? Questions and comments are welcomed, as always.
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There has never been, perhaps, a better validation of Marshall McLuhan than in the expolsive growth of Internet social media. If there was ever any doubt that the medium is, indeed, the message, then let those misgivings be put to rest. The co-dependent relationship between the means and the statement has progressed to the point that it is impossible to disengage one from the other; whether for better or worse does not even matter. While I find that the terminology tends to make my skin crawl if I allow myself to tenatively utter some of the phraseology of this new IM would-be marvel, it seems to offer its patrons some sense of identity, and if that translates into access to art, then it is well done. But please do not clutter your tweets (argh!) with revelations about what you just found under the sofa or how you just found some underwear in your laundry baket that cannot readily be identified.