Greetings everyone!

I’m Nita Hadzihamza, a graphic design student at New Bulgarian University in Sofia, Bulgaria.

 I’m one of the seven young artists chosen to be part of the Consumer vs. User 2.0 project. Digital arts make me happy. Being part of this project makes me feel happy and exited since I’ve been feeling the lack of this kind of projects in the past few years. This is my last year of studies in Bulgaria, after I finish I would like to dedicate to the improvement of the visual conciseness in my home country, Macedonia. 

ICE progress

Whew-

We found a bus company that fits in the budget for our bus trip to Croton Reservoir.

The kids are in the midst of their Post Production process for the Plant movies they are creating. In small groups they are dividing roles and responsibilites:
audio editor
flash animator
title and credits
images and still graphics

In two weeks we will be reviewing rough cuts.

Onward!

+ _+ Digital - Studio __++

Hey all!  I'm Reggie Woolery, curator of education at the University of California, Riverside's California Museum of Photography on ARTSblock.  We have a group of young people coming to our Digital Studio on Saturday afternoons for the last six weeks learning about the history of mural-making in southern California -- and hopefully how we can mosh graffiti styles with the old styles to make something digitally new.  

The instructor is William Bejarano a painter, muralist, and graphic artist. So there has been lots of drawing, photography in local neighborhoods, learning about digi-graphics, and recently a field trip into Los Angeles for a symposium on 1970s mural-making, featuring a number of incredible artists. 

For our students this class has given them a chance to break out the sketchbooks and pick up ideas from the visual history and urban energy. We're happy to be a part of this group and look forward to seeing everyone's project and getting to know a few of you better.

Karibu! My name is Peter Johnson, the community coordinator for Hot Sun Foundation. Hello to everyone in ZERO1 from Kibera, Kenya.

Hot Sun Foundation is working with youth in Kibera, the largest slum in east Africa, located in Nairobi, Kenya. We are the only organization in Kibera focusing on social transformation through art and media.

Our project is called CALL AND RESPONSE, which is a youth video exchange between Kibera and the USA. We are working with about 20 youth, seven of whom have posted videos on our blogspot. You can see our work on kiberaexchange.blogspot.com.

Our goal is for youth in Kibera to make a series of personal videos about life in Kibera.

Hot Sun Foundation Kibera Slums Nairobi Kenya

Karibu! My name is Peter Johnson, the community coordinator for Hot Sun Foundation. Hello to everyone in ZERO1 from Kibera, Kenya.

Hot Sun Foundation is working with youth in Kibera, the largest slum in east Africa, located in Nairobi, Kenya. We are the only organization in Kibera focusing on social transformation through art and media.

Our project is called CALL AND RESPONSE, which is a youth video exchange between Kibera and the USA. We are working with about 20 youth, seven of whom have posted videos on our blogspot. You can see our work on kiberaexchange.blogspot.com.

Our goal is for youth in Kibera to make a series of personal videos about life in Kibera.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

Hello from the Education Department at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. We’ve just completed session three of our ten-session program, which means that our students are in the midst of preparing their first projects.

This spring, we are offering two separate (but related) workshops for high school artists: a digital photography class, and an electronic music class. The photographers are constructing series of original pictures while the musicians are creating experimental music pieces. At the halfway point in the program, each student will swap work with someone from the other class. The students will then begin a second project, inspired by the work of their partner. The final works will be audio slideshows, comprised of photographs and music together.

The structure for this program evolved from a conversation about the painter Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and his friendship with composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Kandinsky, an important artist in the Guggenheim’s collection, believed that painting and music were strongly related and that that he and Schoenberg were addressing synonymous ideas, but through different mediums.

With Kandinsky’s ideas in mind, we designed a program that we hope will allow high-school-age artists to be inspired by a variety of sources, be it in their own medium or in another.

We'll keep you posted....

Freedimensional/CIAC Syndicate 19 Brooklyn,NY

Hello this is Arthur Bouie. I'm the Special Project Associate for Freedimensional and the Center for International Arts in Community. I'm writing for our Syndicate 19 school program.

CIAC's Syndicate 19 program offers collaborations with local youth in our arts and media literacy program, which operates in conjunction with the International High School at Prospect Heights. We are focusing on projects that enable artists to work with educators to empower local high school students to investigate and document their world critically and creatively. Our program is multi-disciplined offering the students a chance to work with many mediums from digital photography to the web.

Our 01 project will be a time capsule with the graduating class that focuses on the growth experienced by the students of International High School at Prospect Heights during their time in this country. This is the first group of high school graduating students, and it is an honor to showcase their achievements. In addition, our project will be linked to the work we'll be doing with our partners in Cairo.

Discovery Youth, San Jose, CA

Hi, this is Ryan Smith, assitant director of Youth Programs, writing from Children's Discovery Youth of San Jose.

First, a bit about our media-based afterschool program, Discovery Youth. Discovery Youth is a free program for youth in grades 5th - 12th. Our program breaks down into three basic elements: digital photography, film, and web. Projects focus around the interests and concerns of program participants, typically centering on issues of community and culture, giving a voice to our diverse group. In addition, Discovery Youth fulfils a number of service learnig projects in Silicon Valley by volunteering at various organizations in the area. In the past we have been involved with Adobe Youth Voices, Cinequest, and 01 San Jose, among others. Our work is also displayed on the official Discovery Youth website, http://www.getchy.com/. Please visit us to see work we have completed in the past.

Our 01 project will be an extension of our digital photography/Photoshop unit of this year. Because 01 will be held in our wonderful city, and becuase the youth in our program feel very connected to San Jose, our project will be based on how youth see their community, showcasing the elements of San Jose they feel deserve to be seen by a larger audience. It is very exciting for us to be participating in the festival this year.

Fast Forward, ICA/Boston

This is Joe Douillette, director of the Fast Forward Program at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts. The Fast Forward Program is an after school video art program for high-school students. Most of our students come from the Boston Public Schools. They meet at the ICA once a week for a full school year.

Our ZER01 project is an exciting addition to our existing video art program. It is designed to help the students who have been in the program for multiple years achieve the next level of artistry, professionalism and self-sufficiency. We have designed a grant process for the students that will allow them to request financial support for their spring productions. As part of the grant, the students are required to define and describe their work, plan a budget, document their process and seek out and engage with a professional Boston-area artist as a mentor.

A number of area professionals will serve as a grant review committee. Some of them will also serve as the artist/mentors for the students. The students will have to be in regular communication with the mentor, and they will have to present their work to the committee as well.

As our students leave our program, we want them to be comfortable seeking out new artistic communities. We also want them to be confident in their abilities to dream up and present their work to those that can offer support. We hope that this experience will help them gain that confidence.

We are very excited. The students proposals are due today. We will keep you posted.

People can see examples of ICA Fast Forward work at http://fastforward.blip.tv

Congrats and good luck to everyone!

Hello from Skopje - Macedonia!

hi this is Ivana writing, on behalf of LINE Initiative and Movement from Skopje. I am 25 yrs old artist/activist now working with LINE, the creators of the project Consumer vs. User 2.0.

This is a continuation of an earlier Consumer vs. User project from 2007, which featured workshops on history of sound art and hardware; technology: use of open source tools, production, publishing/internet publishing, radio technology and VJ-ing. participants were young creative people active in various new media fields.

the 2.0 version is dedicated to theoretical and practical education of youth in the area of digital arts, focusing on generative arts and open source tools for creation. participants are 7 young artists (20-21 yrs old) that were chosen through an open call. they have interest in graphic and web design, character development, video animation and visual poetry.

young artists in Macedonia are not encouraged to resort to alternative, new or experimental media, so our main goal is to create and support the core of people that will further spread the idea, attract more young artists willing to experiment and use new media or digital expression, collaborate and increase in number.

essentially, consumer vs. user 2.0 is created to fully service, support and promote young upcoming new media artists.

we will develop ideas and visualize them through generative arts practices, and finally choose the best one to send to the festival. I personally am very excited to work with young artists in skopje, especially because of the rigid conditions we still face from time to time. we plan to update you with materials from our meetings and lectures, photos and videos from artists' studio visits, some ideas, comments... and hope to see a lot from you!

talk to you soon

ivana

Hello from I.C.E. NYC

Hi. I am Meryl Meisler, digital art teacher (and Admissions Director) at Institute for Collaborative Education in NYC.
I.C.E. is a small, progressive grades 6-12 NYC public school.

Here is some information about our "Sustenance and Sustainability" project:
The interdisciplinary project (art, technology, science, environmental studies, writing...) will be created by our 63 6th grade students. The students go to science (teacher Yvette Valdez) every day for 50 minutes. They go to Digital Art (teacher Meryl) four times a week.

We received a Forestry Bus Tour Grant, and will take the 6th grade to the Croton Reservoir during the month of April. The students will meet and interview environmentalists to learn about maintaining and sustaining our water system. We will document with video and still images the sites and sounds of the Croton system. We plan to create multi-media PSAs about Sustenance and Sustainability of the NYC Reservoir System.

In addition, the students are creating "The Comic Life of Plants", animated movies with voice overs that educate the viewer about the life and times of plants- what they need for sustenance and how to sustain them.

We are so psyched!

Welcome 01SJ Adobe Global Youth Voices Participants!!!

Program Documentation:
A key component of the O1SJ Adobe Global Youth Voices program is documentation of the process of each group working with the youth in their community. The hope is that through this grant program and exhibition, more attention and excitement can be generated for those engaging youth via new and innovative artistic tools and practice. Therefore, we ask that each participating group share the individual methods they have developed for working with youth with documentation of the process and implementation of the program funded by the 01SJ Youth International Micro-Grant. As a place to house and collect the documentation of each group, a blog site is being developed. The hope is that the blog site will also act as a forum for the individuals, collaborators and organizations involved to meet, share insights and engage in open discussion regarding the issues and successes of their programming. The blog entries will serve to narrate the process of putting such programming into place, and be included in the exhibition of 01SJ Youth International in June 2008.

Documentation guidelines:
The documentation of your program is meant to be a natural extension of your program, and not a hindrance. You should post in any way that is comfortable.
Blog entries can include but are not limited to:

• links to/urls of inspirations that lead to the development of the project/program
• journal entries re: planning meetings and progress reports
• annotated photo/video documentation of the program in progress
• sound or written interviews with or entries by the participants,
• any documents used to facilitate or evaluate the program

We are open and just excited to see your progress online!

Each group must provide an initial post with the name of your name, group, organization, collective, etc., the project name, a brief discussion, the number of youth you are serving (an estimate is fine), the goals of the project, and your projected outcome (ie the medium/form the work generated by the youth will take).

1-2 posts per month, after signing the contract and beginning the project--through May.