Today I participated remotely in the Twitter Tour of the Whitney Biennial, organized by @Whitney, @WNYCculture and @cmosntah (Caroline Miranda), and led by Biennial curator Gary Carrion-Murayari. Eight winners of a contest were invited to go on the tour through the galleries and tweet about it. A bunch of us followed the tweeters, got to ask questions, add comments and participate in a strange but enjoyable experience.
What was it like? The fun part was performing an unscripted conversation about the Biennial in real time with smart people I didn’t necessarily know. We came together and formed an ad hoc little community for the event (an event community) to eagerly share and receive words from the curator, reactions to the art, and pictures. Even though there were two distinct groups – those who were at the Whitney, and those who were not, it didn’t feel hierarchical.
As remote participants we only received a small fraction of the story due to the limitations designed into Twitter. There were plenty of tweets that arrived out of chronological order, partly due to dead spots in the Museum, and partly to the differences in people’s phones, so the flow wasn’t smooth. But no one expected a typical museum tour. In fact, I’m not sure any of us knew what to expect. That was part of the excitement. I was on auto-pilot for a few minutes when I had my ear buds in, as if expecting there to be Twitter audio. I guess that’s next!
Would I do this again? Probably. Did I have fun and converse with some very interesting people? Yes!
You can follow all the comments and see all the pictures at #WhiBi. You’ll be surprised how much you find out!