Twitter’s First Post Conceptual Performance Art Success

Dec. 4, 2008 - PRLog -- Twitter’s first Post Conceptual Performance Art Event by artist Judy Rey Wasserman on December 2, 2008, was groundbreaking. Creating a temporary art event that people the world over could watch and instantly participate through the same media, contributing to the group’s canvas is a new use for social media.
The Twitter event drew other arts related writers, artists, social media experts and fans, who posted comments about their own work or wrote blogs about it. For Judy Rey this is all a part of the event and is appreciated, even encouraged.
Twitter has an immediacy of interaction between artist and viewer, plus allows for viewer to viewer interaction on a world wide basis. This interaction is a part of the artistic event.
On the day before the event notice and invitation was Twittered several times and announced on Facebook. Here is an example of an early Tweet:” Pass it on: Tues., Dec 2 at 4:35 EST Rembrandt becomes Vincent van Gogh Here. Live. Only on Twitter.”
The event on Twitter was strongly linked to an explanatory article that was published on the day of the performance on Judy Rey Wasserman’s Post Conceptual UnGraven Image's Art & Inspiration blog.
Social media sites such as Twitter are where people share ideas, socialize, and offer goods or services are fast becoming the piazzas or town squares of the world. Historically, communities have always placed art in their social and commerce centers.
Judy Rey’s act of exchanging her avatar of Rembrandt created with strokes that are the original letters of Psalm 22 for one of Vincent van Gogh created with symbol-strokes from the text of Psalm 113 has significance in art history.
From his early works, such as The Potato Eaters, it is evident that van Gogh was influenced by the work of the earlier Dutch Painter. Both artists considered themselves to be religious painters.
The artistic and spiritual roots Judy Rey Wasserman’s idea for the event stems from the sand paintings of the Buddhists and Navajo artists. Twitter, where the communications create a shifting and transient visual image shared by a community, is an online replication of a gathering place for Performance Art or the making of a sand painting.
Twitter’s coding automatically edits former comments changing newer avatars for previous ones. The record of the previous avatar disappears from its previous posts as the new one is substituted. History is revised by code.
Will there be more art events on Twitter? “Absolutely! Twitter can be seen as a canvas shared by a whole community,” says Judy Rey. “Just as each viewer sees a work of art differently, each member of Twitter follows a different group of people and logs in at different moments; the experience of art is also always personal, unique and immediate.”

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