Viral tile,

This project’s roots are at the intersection of protest art, art intervention and interactive art practices. It does not hang nor is it placed in a gallery, or studio, traditional art arenas. The decorative ceramic tiles, and Austerity Icons will be left in the public space to be glimpsed and found. 

It seeks to engage and entice the public. The  work will be left for them to be discovered and wondered over. Some will be on spikes in the ground, some will be left loose on ledges others will have magnetic backs or wire fasteners to hang on gates posts fences. Any with rude words will be hung or left above the five foot ‘watershed’. The decision has to be made “Shall I take it ?” hopefully they will be taken away, and collected.

The Austerity Icons use a child’s cookie cutter shape, of a gingerbread man, folded into classic poses of sleep and death, or a hole for an empty tummy, to represent the people who have either lost their lives, homes, or have to use food banks to survive, since the first conservative  government implemented these policies in late 2008.

Each tile or icon will have on the reverse a QR code which when scanned by a smartphone, will take the finder to the twitter feed, which will also be linked to a facebook page and a blog.

Each tile is decorated with a Meme or tweet copied from facebook and twitter.

For this artwork to be deemed ‘successful’ it must spread like a virus on social media,the tile  finders, becoming complicit in its spreading, by uploading a selfie  of them holding the found tile or icon to the web. In this way spreading the messages on the tiles, and in social media parlance becoming ‘viral’.

facebook.com/viral.tile

https://twitter.com/ViralTile


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