[Press Release by ABC TV]
Reface, a new interactive website calls on street artists across Australia to help us examine and challenge the way we look at street art. Cutting edge media producers WBMC and the ololo art collective are working with ABC TV and the Perth International Arts Festival to challenge the way we look at street art.
Today Reface was launched – www.abc.net.au/reface inviting all street artists across Australia to upload their work, a selection of which will be projected onto buildings during the Perth International Arts Festival. Street art all around the world remains controversial and divisive. Is it art? Over two weekends of the Perth International Arts Festival (27-28 February & 6-8 March) Reface will utilise large-scale digital projection to paint the nocturnal city streetscape of Perth.
The Reface project will test whether people’s attitudes to street art are different if the images are impermanent. The Perth International Arts Festival events will also feature the latest in public interactivity with the audience at one projection location able to control the images, ‘paint’ on the side of the buildings using lasers and even play big screen interactive games.
The project also calls on all Australians to help build a digital street art map of Australia by simply taking a snap of street art from their local area and uploading it to the website.
Reface is one of two projects commissioned as a result of the ‘iArts’ (interactive arts) initiative, developed by ABC TV, ScreenWest and the Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts.