Youtube PLAY: The Internet and the Visual Arts Go Symbiotic.

(Pido disculpas al lector que no lea inglés. Estoy haciendo un pequeño experimento estadístico con este post)

I'm sure I've bothered quite a large amount of my friends before considering this groundbreaking biennial event. It's not recent news, but both Youtube and the Guggenheim Museum have gathered forces to bring every other year this amazing display of contemporary arts called Play. The first one took place on October 2010 and was broadcast live for the whole globe, of course, on Youtube.

"Design It" winner, 2009.

The Guggenheim Museum is far from being the classic Renaissance "please don't run" hangers (not that there's anything wrong with them): this particular museum has always been known for taking huge risks into the contemporary. Back in the 1930's the Guggenheim's Foundation first museum showcased artists such as Mondrian, Bauer and Kandinsky, so innovation is always rightfully expected from them. The museum white box-shaped building with an inside spiraled gallery, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was very criticized at first and is nowadays widely acclaimed. Such was also the case for several expositions displayed at the museum. Recently, in summer 2009, the Guggenheim and Google encouraged people to participate on a shelter design competition (using Google Earth and Google SketchUp) with great results, and a year later the collaboration was made with Youtube with even greater outcomes.    

Having this in mind we can now consider Youtube's role in the project. The keyword here is access. Not only the winning videos would be broadcast live from the Museum in New York and uploaded on Youtube for millions of viewers, but the main idea behind the name is that anyone can Play. There's no need to be a professional artist, film director, nor to have a particular education background or budget. You just need an idea creative enough and the determination to develope it. Any video creator around the world can nominate his own work to be analized by the museum jury (which by the way includes Black Swan director, Darren Aronofsky). Youtube Play is therefore a once in a lifetime -once every other year- opportunity I'm not willing to let pass again, and I hope you aren't either. 2012, here we come. 

Here's a glance of what happened last year. My personal favorite.