Art Just Got Serious

It all started with posting a few pictures of graffiti-painted trains on Instagram. Soon I was seeing likes from profiles that embraced "moving galleries," "graffiti art," and "street art." Upon closer look at these other profiles, I discovered there is a large community of folks who have shown me that what some may call graffiti is really remarkable artwork.

Instagram, Flickr, Google+, and other photo-sharing networks have made it easy for people to showcase their art. These platforms have also helped us rethink our knowledge of what art is. It no longer has to hang in a gallery to be appreciated. The world is a much bigger showcase. 

The following are a few samplings of the wonderful street art available on Instagram. This is transmedia in action.

Instagram as a Transmedia Tool

For those of you who are still figuring out the digital platforms, Instagram is a picture- and video-sharing network for people with mobile devices. It is also a social network, where you can meet and chat with fellow Instagramers in their feeds, or like and share their images.

The platform grew to 400 million in September 2015, to which over 75 million use it daily. Instagram reaches approximately 34 percent of the United States population.

When it comes to storytelling, using Instagram as a transmedia tool can be powerful.

Dave Amirault shows how to use it for an event. From there, there you can use your Instagram settings to automatically share your photographs in other networks or use other network-sharing platforms, such as Buffer, IFTTT (IF This Then That), and Hootsuite.

So how would it work as a transmedia tool? Let’s take the movie The Imitation Game. It is the story about the man behind what is considered the birthplace of the computer as we know it today. 

Of course, there is the obvious: setting up the Instagram account as The Imitation Game, and then posting imagery surrounding the still shots from the movie, behind the scenes, or the actors involved. This kind of account may have a limited shelf life. While movies do live on and become classics after so many years, the appeal of the website or social media pages tend to wane because after it has been relegated to the DVD, the social content for that particular film runs dry. The production company has already moved onto the next film.

There is another way to keep the content going, while keeping the film “out there” for the long-term, as long as there is a community manager posting to it regularly.

Turn it into a fan site. Start posting fan art related to the movie. Maybe even find a fan you can trust to manage the community.

Instead of the movie title, you could make-up a creative version of IBM’s Watson Computer. This link (about some of the innovations computers have generated) is an example of some of the content that could be shared via photographs, but with your own spin, using the movie stills or solid backgrounds.

Your mind is only as limited as your creativity. 

Originally published October 29, 2015 freelancepublishing.net, Debbie Elicksen