participation

The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now
$39.95
The first fully illustrated survey of participatory art and its key practitioners, published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

This new survey covers the rich and varied history of participatory art, from early happenings and performances to current practices that demand audience interaction. As the hallmarks of Web 2.0?browsing, sharing, collecting, producing?increasingly permeate every aspect of society, this timely project reveals the ways in which artists and viewers have approached the creation of open works of art. The featured artists include Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Janet Cardiff, Lygia Clark, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Allan Kaprow, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Antoni Muntadas, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and Erwin Wurm.

Original essays by Rudolf Frieling, Boris Groys, Robert Atkins, and Lev Manovich identify seminal moments in participatory practice from the 1950s to the present day. A rich array of plates introduce work by all the artists in the accompanying exhibition, with reproductions of significant projects by other major figures?from Helio Oiticica, Joan Jonas, and Gordon Matta-Clark to Rirkrit Tiravanija and SUPERFLEX?rounding out the survey. 215 color illustrations.

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)
$31.99
If you are interested in the study of situated learning and social practice theory, this is the place to start - the origin of the terms `legitimate peripheral participation' (LPP) and `communities of practice' employed ubiquitously by researchers developing sociocultural critiques of Enlightenment thinking. The book is meant to open the mind, and one established notion that readers are asked to give up is a literal view of apprenticeship based on a single master and apprentice. The Lave & Wenger framework has received some criticism due to the explicit power structure associated with such a relationship and the uniform learning trajectory that is entailed, but this criticism is no doubt levied by writers who have not read the book, as Lave & Wenger are careful to note that in their quest to find a metaphor for learning that exists outside formal educational contexts and is based on social participation rather than the internal mental processing of the computer metaphor they aim to replace, they needed to take some artistic license. Their aim is to characterize a specific form of learning, LPP, and through their detailed examples, they illustrate types of relationships and forms of participation within which it emerges -- a broader and respecified notion of apprenticeship.

This book is programmatic - a specific metaphor for learning is described, it is elaborated through several examples, and major issues are discussed, but for details, you will need to look elsewhere. Wenger's (1998) Communities of Practice is an analytical treatment that is the antithesis of the light and vibrant Situated Learning, but that is the go-to place to understand LPP from every angle and in all its detail.

For those who hope to capture this genie in a bottle that is LPP, Wenger's (2002) Cultivating Communities of Practice explains how institutions can `plan for' LPP (it cannot be planned or managed, but it can be `planned for' by putting in place the conditions so that it is likely to emerge). But beware, as Wenger warns that few institutional leaders have the wherewithal to maintain the `hands off' policy required for LPP to be sustained over the long term (and the need for facilitative structures is also the basis for Lave's long-held skepticism about this form of learning appearing - at least in a positive form as educators intend it - in formal schooling).

Readers who are interested less in application than in the genesis and epistemological basis of a sociocultural, practice-based theory of learning will find Lave (1988) Cognition in Practice and Rogoff & Lave (1985) Everyday Cognition useful. They lay the groundwork for Situated Learning.

The Everyday (Documents of Contemporary Art)
$24.95
Numerous international exhibitions and biennials have borne witness to the range of contemporary art engaged with the everyday and its antecedents in the work of Surrealists, Situationists, the Fluxus group, and conceptual and feminist artists of the 1960s and 1970s. This art shows a recognition of ordinary dignity or the accidentally miraculous, an engagement with a new kind of anthropology, an immersion in the pleasures of popular culture, or a meditation on what happens when nothing happens. The celebration of the everyday has oppositional and dissident overtones, offering a voice to the silenced and proposing possibilities for change. This collection of writings by artists, theorists, and critics assembles for the first time a comprehensive anthology on the everyday in the world of contemporary art.

Artists surveyed include:
Chantal Akerman, Francis Al���s, Vladimir Arkhipov, Ian Breakwell, Stanley Brouwn, Sophie Calle, Marcel Duchamp, Fischli & Weiss, Nan Goldin, Dan Graham, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Mary Kelly, Lettrist International, Jonas Mekas, Annette Messager, Aleksandra Mir, Roman Ond���k, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Martha Rosler, Allen Ruppersberg, Daniel Spoerri, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andy Warhol, Richard Wentworth, Stephen Willats.

Writers include:
Paul Auster, Maurice Blanchot, Geoff Dyer, Hal Foster, Suzy Gablik, Ben Highmore, Henri Lefebvre, Lucy R. Lippard, Michel Maffesoli, Helen Molesworth, Nikos Papastergiadis, Georges Perec, John Roberts, David Ross, Nicholas Serota, Michael Sheringham, Alison and Peter Smithson, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Jeff Wall, Jonathan Watkins.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Say It! (Audience Participation Album)
$19.98
The title of this review pretty much says it all. I also really like some of the little additional parts added to it. Not only does it create the atmosphere, but it really is an entertaining album to listen to. Although a lot of the lines are outdated, a lot of the lines are pretty funny. I want to keep a lot of the stuff to myself, just because if you haven't heard the album, I want you to be surprised.