Learning to Love You More

Learning to Love You More (LTLYM) is crowdsourced art project on the world wide web. Participants accepted and adhered to an assignment, completed it by following the simple but specific instructions, sent in the required report (photograph, text, video, etc.), and saw their work posted on-line. It is a series of museum exhibitions, radio broadcasts and a web blog "intended to guide people towards their own experience."[1] It was an ever changing piece of art spanning the physical, digital and emotional ranges of everyday people.

There is no permanent offline exhibition of Learning to Love You More. Past presentations have been at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Rhodes College in Memphis, the Aurora Picture Show in Houston, The Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, and the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. In 2010, the website was acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who currently host the site for public view.

The project was created in 2002 by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, with a website created by Yuri Ono as an artistic piece, and closed in 2009. In May 2009, the authors of the project discontinued their work with a final assignment of "Say Goodbye". Since the beginning of the project, over 8,000 people have contributed.

The contributions to Learning to Love You More were not edited, and very few were rejected,[2] leading to a wide variety of different approaches to the assignments and an ever-changing series of exhibitions, screenings and radio broadcasts presented all over the world, participant's documentation is also their submission for possible inclusion in one of these presentations. This participatory approach to art that invites one to experience it in ways other than merely observing it is similar to the message of Augusto Boal in his Theater of the Oppressed.

Andrea Grover, practitioner in crowdsourced art, participated in Learning to Love You More because she "wanted to be a part of that community."[3] The appeal of LTLYM, and crowdsourced art in general, according to Grover, is the satisfaction that is attained through working in a community.

Book

Learning to Love You More is also available in book form, which features selections of the art from the website.[4] The book was criticized, however, by Publishers Weekly, stating that "The resonance of the work...is sadly diminished in book form." There is no organization, as contributions are isolated,[5] losing most of the appeal of the work that was only made possible by viewing them on the website.

Notes

  1. ↑ http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/hello/index.php
  2. ↑ http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/crowd_captain/
  3. ↑ http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/crowd_captain/?currentPage=2
  4. ↑ http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Love-More-Harrell-Fletcher/dp/3791337335
  5. ↑ http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Love-More-Harrell-Fletcher/dp/3791337335

External links