When We Are Mammoths: ARTPRIZE, Grand Rapids, exploring art brands, strategy and evolutionary storytelling
Over time, we’ve explored the concept of the artist brand — the human brand that exemplifies the reach to actualized storytelling and organized presentation of content. To that end, there might be something to our work in exploring brand dimensionality for Dale Chihuly, or notations on the work of Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Andy Goldsworthy, James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson, others. In studying the legacy of human brands, artists, one learns to observe the state of positioning and, if you will, strategy — what’s the story, how do you tell it, how is it organized, how do people understand?
Web Sites, interestingly, offer insights into the management and expression of these brands, which are global powerhouses of experience in the artistic community. How are these stories told? What do they feel like? Some explorations:
The process that we use in examining the human brand | artist positioning is based on that premise — soul, heart, light, writing, story, art, memory, audience. One might translate that to something like: vision, mission, values, attributes, messages, history, story, resonance.
To reference, Girvin’s examinations of the premise of Chihuly.
Any brand exploration, human or otherwise, will be about that – what’s the soul of it? What’s the story? Spirit place, of brand? Who cares — who remembers? And who should be entranced?
Schemm work:
The notion of art / human brand can be about bringing the experiencer into a place, a renewed environment, an experience that can be both edifying, rejuvenating and captivating. Working with Schemm follows a similar archaeology. The development of brand story, in sequence — listening to the telling and evincing the spirit therein:
How could the layering be collated — orchestrated into a way of seeing: it.
The work, the making, the spirit of endless creative intention / attention is about passionate commitment — it is a tapestry. Finding the warp and weft of this tapestry is where the beauty lies. It merely needs to be found — and spoken in a language that can be held and savored. Embracement is unforgettable.
Working with Richard Schemm, building the site, was that exploration, examining the drivers of the brand, the story, the vision and how to visualize that proposition — what gathered messages might be added for consideration? Our process is about listening, gathering, examining and coordinating and collating the outcomes — and thinking about them in the construct of hybrid media — social and otherwise.
The brand storytelling of hybrid experience:
The work expanded on the premise of storytelling — nestled in the larger event called ArtPrize, Grand Rapids, Michigan — there was another layer. When We Are Mammoths is an installation that Schemm and a team created to express the story of the legacy of Michigan — a mission that reaches into the history of Michigan, the so-called collapse of industrial society, and finally their rejuvenation in the emergence of Michigan’s rebirth.
Working with Schemm, to the symbolism of the Mammoths, a series of sculptures founded on small maquettes of steel shavings adhered to a substrate. They’re currently installed at ArtPrize — check the links for more. Again, what’s the story, how to build on it?
An opening description that we wrote, catalyzes the story, from ancient to modern, told below.
When We Are Mammoths | Schemm
“One of the greatest creatures — the Grand Mammoth — to range the earth, surviving as a giant for millions of years, was one of the foundations of human sustenance until 15,000 years ago — for everything, in all uses, it nourished and nurtured humankind. House, warmth, food, clothing, tools > all from the Mammoth.
And the Mammoth is reborn, newly visioned, in the rising cold steel that comes from the hammered and hardened forged spirit of ancient times, and the grinding, polished cladding of our recent era, in celebrating our connection to millions of earth years — and the more recent moments of our history.
Like the changes that forced the Mammoth out of existence, tens of thousands ago, we are reborn — rising up, as that same giant, mammoth spirit, reborn from the archaeology of our past, newly visioned. We stride forward, stamping the ground, calling out our roar, we are Michigan, great land, grand people, trumpeting our rise, legacy forward, newly made from the remnants of our proud history.”
Again, to the expansion on the principle, brand development, humanity and community, it is about that gathering and layering of story and experience. Ideas — hybrid brand expressions:
There is an art in storytelling. But the real power lies in the notation of how that story is told. Art, too, is a revealing and a search that lies in the journey of the teller — the maker. We only listen, transcribe, message and visualize what we hear.
The rest of the world waits on that revelation.
Tim | Decatur Island
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Exploring the heart of human experience.
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