Art's Birthday - January 17th 2004

"Art's Birthday"

is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou.

He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Modest beginnings, but look at us now.

Filliou proposed a public holiday to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. In recent years, the idea has been taken up by a loose network of artists and friends around the world.

Each year the Eternal Network evolves to include new partners - working with the ideas of exchange and telecommunications-art. For the upcoming Art's Birthday (January 17th 2004), the Western Front has invited artists to join in a simultaneous birthday bash.

From January 16th through to the 18th participating artists will use sensors, software, and robotics to join in the creation of activated social spaces that respond to data flow from one site to another. Based on ideas developed during the Scrambled_Bites residency, data collected at each location (using various sensors) will be broadcast on the Internet using the Scrambled_Bites message server.