User:Dialogzchick

D-i-a-logz public art project
D-i-a-logz is a public artwork that will introduce recently arrived international teenagers to the Twin Cities community. A partnership between media artist Barbra Nei and the non-profit arts agency Forecast Public Art, this project utilizes technology to engage and educate viewers about the students’ immigration and assimilation experiences. The project began as a vehicle with which to bridge the gap of understanding between Minnesota youth cultures. In artist residencies at Wellstone International High School from 2006-2009, Nei instructed students in the use of writing, digital photography and video as tools through which to explore their personal narratives. The focus of the workshops was that of relationship and skill-building; the workshop students, many of them refugees with little or no prior experience with art making, were introduced to digital storytelling and instructed in the use of basic techniques of media production as tools with which to tell their stories. The work has evolved as a three-phased project: phase one being comprised of these digital storytelling workshops. Phase two of D-i-a-logz involved the creation of a series of artist-produced video interviews made with the students involved in the workshops as well as the design and launch of a project website that houses these interviews and student produced works.. The launch of the D-i-a-logz website extended the project’s reach beyond these students and into the world. The third phase of the D-i-a-logz project will bring this project into the everyday lives of the residents of the Twin Cities. This phase involves the launch of a series of interactive posters located at transit shelters throughout the metro area. Positioned at highly trafficked and accessible sites, these electronic posters will allow viewers to download of a series of short video animations onto their cell phones. Each stop will be linked to a different video; viewers will be able to download different aspects of the immigration process as experienced by these new Americans onto their cell phones as they travel throughout the city. Incorporating mobile advertising technology with multimedia phone messaging embraced by the teenage population this project addresses, this interactive component of the D-i-a-logz project will lend a very public voice to an otherwise silent population of Twin Cities’ youth.