January 16, 17 & 18 2004

ART'S BIRTHDAY - Call for Collaborators

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"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.

Previous Art's Birthday celebrations have included audio streaming events, web-cam exchanges, telephone music, slo-scan video, fax art, and other modes of long distance communication. In 1974 (30 years ago) the Western Front celebrated its first Art's Birthday with the Decca-Dance:
Art Stars in Hollywood. Artists from accross North America travelled to the splendid ballroom of the former Elk's Lodge on MacArthur Park in Hollywood to take part in a live-art stage show.

For the upcoming Art's Birthday (January 17th 2004), the Western Front is inviting artists and artist organizations 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 an activated social space that responds to data flow through the Scrambler server.

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