This piece was going to start with a quote from Dirty Harry, but I’m not feeling lucky. So instead I’m going with Wikipedia.
There’s something called the infinite monkey theorem (which is in itself such a cool term that it deserves to be used more often even if the science is, well, questionable). It goes like this: if you placed an infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of typewriters, for an infinite amount of time, you could produce any given text — the complete works of William Shakespeare, for example.
Now I’m probably going to draw a little bit of flak for comparing creative people to monkeys but let’s face it, we writers get paid peanuts, so I kind of know where I’m coming from here.
At the Design Indaba in Cape Town, between February 23 and 25, international and local designers, artists, marketers, advertising executives and other delegates will be asked to participate in what Absa, a sponsor of the event, hopes will become “the biggest digital artwork ever produced at a single event”.
Called 72 Hours of Creativity, delegates will be able to contribute photographs, videos, articles, doodles — anything that they have created during the event. These can be submitted electronically (by email) and the works will be displayed for public view on two digital walls at the International Convention Centre.
The work will also be posted on a website (www.absa72.co.za) that will echo the content shown on the walls. The website will remain live for six months. It’s a great concept — anyone can be an artist-meets-flash-mob-mentality if enough people are willing to be monkeys, or at least download a monkey app on to their iPhones.
‘Disciplines and genres’
“There are lots of creatives from lots of different disciplines and genres,” says Pierre Odendaal, the executive creative director at The Jupiter Drawing Room in Johannesburg. “We wanted to come up with a way of talking to all of them — not just the designers. It’s also tough to produce creative content for a creative audience. They can see through it.
“Going to the Design Indaba, participating in it — that is the experience. 72 Hours of Creativity gives people a chance to own it and it’s a vehicle that brings that experience to life. We’re simply providing the mechanisms. It’s a call to action. Anything that you’d normally do on your cellphone — text, images, sketches — you can email them in and two minutes later they’ll appear on screen.”
Odendaal says that he hopes the project will illustrate that South Africa is “very fresh in its creative approach” and that the event and website will become platforms forspreading that message nationally and internationally.
Besides the crowd-sourced submissions, sponsor Absa has also commissioned seven major artists — Conrad Botes, Kai Lossgott, Guy du Toit, Billie Zangewa, Karin Lijnes, Hannah Hughes and Gordon Froud — to create work inspired by the project. These will be on display at the Absa L’Atelier stand at the expo.
To submit work members of the public have to register with the site and they will receive a unique tag, which can also be used later to search for work on the website. Laptops are being provided at the indaba itself for sad people without smartphones.
The digital wall display will be two massive “glass brick” (LED) screens, about five metres high and two metres wide. As work is submitted, the wall displays will morph and change to reflect the additional content.
Delegates will also be given branded sticker packs, which they can place around the Convention Centre as part of the 72-hour project. The stickers are removable and reusable — it’s one of the terms and conditions of using the Convention Centre that property doesn’t get defaced or damaged; so, sadly, bringing your own unbranded stickers is probably discouraged.
Odendaal says that, when it comes to content, anything goes — as long as it’s not crass or crude (such items will, apparently, not be posted). There’s also something for mahala — the popular e-zine Mahala.co.za is being taken over by the 72 Hours of Creativity for the duration of the event and the second print issue of the title will carry the number “72” on its cover.
I’d like to call it a sell-out, but it’s free. In a sense, despite the heavy branding and corporate marketing objectives, the real promise of this project lies in its potential to be subverted: it’s an open invitation to people all over the world — submissions don’t have to be geographically based, so anyone can contribute, whether they’re in Jo’burg or Helsinki — to play with and hopefully challenge notions of branding, design and art.
After all, if you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of microphones for an infinite amount of time that’s pretty much what I imagine they’d come up with.
For more information, visit www.designindaba.com or follow @designindaba on Twitter