Art Assignment

I discovered a new YouTube channel recently called Art Assignment and last night I got caught up on their first couple of videos. It's quite neat! It's hosted and run by John Green (author of The Fault In Our Stars) and his wife, Sarah Green, and produced by PBS. John and Sarah tour the country visiting contemporary artists and then commission these artists to dream up a creative "assignment"--it can be anything! The videos are posted on their channel and anyone and everyone who is interested can participate. Definitely a little quirky but I think it's a pretty fun concept.

Several of the assignments they've posted so far are (to me, anyway) not exactly "art" per se, but rather an encouragement to be creative and have an experience that is new and imaginative and perhaps to see the world and the people in it in a fresh way. For example, one assignment is to place an object in a public place and observe what happens. Do people pick it up? Notice it or walk right by? Talk about it with the person they're with? Then you create a record of what happened--a photo, a video, maybe a drawing. Doesn't that seem like an intriguing social experiment? And what's fun is that anyone can do the assignments. You don't have to be particularly "artistic," just enthusiastic and innovative.

Anyway, in case you're curious, here's a little intro video that explains the web series well.

Do you think you'll participate? Or follow along with the videos (that's what I plan to do!)?