Sharing Your Work: Testing Your Ideas in Public

Someone asked me this week how many people I think will show up for my upcoming Augmented Reality Tour.

I responded, maybe ten. Maybe three.

In a time when people wish to have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of subscribers on social media, you might think I’d be sad with the prospect of having 2-3 people willing to come out on a cold, possibly rainy Saturday afternoon to see my AR Tour. 

For the past five years I’ve been interested in creating work that is interactive, that engages audiences outside of the screen. I did one audio/video project one summer for 10-15 people and now this project might have an even smaller audience.

It is only upon getting that question that I started reflecting on these facts.

And I have to say, for the first time in a long time the size of the audience doesn’t bother me. The fact that I’ve taken a risk and tried something new to me is more important than the number of people joining me for the experience.

Process and Product

I’ve been striving to get to the point where I care more about the process than the product, while still working to create something meaningful and interesting. 

Yes, on some level this is the case. But I did something else with this project.

While my goal was to create an interactive work, I also created artifacts that I could share in different ways.

I applied to and got into a group show called, Sensing the City­–Sense of the City where I showed a shorter version of this work in the window of the gallery, for passersby to see. This has been another dream of mine, to share my work outside the gallery in this way.

I also showed a version of the video piece in the gallery for the group exhibition Herbststalon–Komm! ins Offene of which the tour is a part. And excerpts exist on the exhibition website as a virtual tour. 

So I’m sharing the work in multiple forms. The tour is just one form. And this video projection augmented reality tour followed on my doing an in-person bike and sensing tour.

What I Learned

I too at one point valued the number of people seeing my work. When I release my books, I’m sure this will be one metric that I use to evaluate my efforts.

As I say this I also realized recently the value of process. I see this upcoming augmented reality tour as a test and as such, having a small audience is preferable to having a large audience.

There is value in testing your ideas and sometimes testing them in a public forum is also rewarding on different levels. 

Over the past few years I’ve attended several artist led tours in Berlin which have been small. Maybe they had 10-15 people. And each event felt special, intimate, and interesting.

Cultivating A Sense of Experimentation 

In researching my book, How to Be Curious, I have discovered six doorways to getting into an open, calm, curious state of mind. Play is number four.

Getting into a mindset of play or experimentation takes the pressure off and helps you move from fear to curiosity.

And when you are more curious you tend to have better ideas, be more innovative, and create more interesting work.

As American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author and educator Linus Pauling says – the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

Having three ways of displaying my video let me play with different ways of experiencing the work.

How Can You Bring a Sense of Play to Sharing Your Work

If you’ve been feeling pressure sharing your work, can you find a way to take the pressure off? Can you bring a sense of play and exploration to your way of sharing? And is it possible to test your ideas in public, either on social media, in a blog, or applying to exhibitions or conferences?