Commissioned by ZERO1 and the San Jose Public Art Program with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, UCSC OpenLab, and Dean Yager’s Research Initiative Fund and Arts Dean’s Excellence Fund at the University of California, Santa Cruz.ArtHERE (2012) is a new initiative and online platform for crowd-sourced urban revitalization through the matching of art and place. Seeking a test platform and catalyst for the program, the artist group behind ArtHERE and ZERO1 have collaboratively positioned the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial as the launch pad for the first region-specific platform - siliconvalley.arthere.org.
Focusing on the greater Silicon Valley region, with the Biennial’s hub in downtown San Jose at its center, ZERO1 worked with local businesses and arts organizations to make a total of 13 spaces (and micro-grants) available in San Jose and Palo Alto that range from storefront windows and building facades, to outdoor projections and parklets. Via two open-call campaigns, artists were invited to submit art proposals online that set out to temporarily animate the available spaces with site-specific installations reflecting the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial theme Seeking Silicon Valley. The creative challenge being to use the architecture of the region as a canvas for vibrant and interactive artworks that reflect the creativity and innovation the Silicon Valley is known for. The selected projects will be exhibited in their respective spaces for the duration of the Biennial from September 12 to December 8, 2012.
The inspiration for “ArtHERE” was developed by Jennifer Parker, Sam Bower, Mark Grothman, Lauren Sinreich and Jim Hovell at the 2011 GAFFTA Summer of Smart Hackathon with the desire to create an online tool enabling city communities and artists to activate empty and under-utilized urban spaces – therefore enabling local communities to curate and actively transform their own neighborhoods.