Can democracy work in the gallery space...

[Jim Richardson]

Can democracy work in a gallery space, that's the question which we are setting out to answer with our digital exhibition DEMOCRACY, which will form part of this years Design Event 09, the North East Design Festival.

DEMOCRACY is an incredibly exciting project for me, it uses a groundbreaking format to change the way that audiences interact with an exhibition. Rather then being a pasisve experience where you visit a gallery to view an exhibition created and curated by an individual, DEMOCRACY is crowd sourcing the works of art and letting the public vote online for what should be in the final exhibition.

Crowd sourced exhibitions have of course been done before, most notably by TATE and the Brooklyn Museum, but DEMOCRACY goes one step further taking web 2.0 interaction into the gallery space.

When the exhibition opens in October, visitors will be able to continue to vote for the artworks they like and their votes will instantly be reflected in the exhibition space, where all the artworks will be digitally displayed. When an artwork receives more votes, it grows in size compared to the pieces displayed around it, so the exhibition will be constantly changing hour by hour, day by day.

As well as the digitally displayed exhibition showing the changing popularity of the work, we will also display comments posted about the artworks on the online community.

Can democracy work in the gallery space, or will it be a terrible mess? You can watch the progress of the exhibition (and get involved by submitting work, commenting and voting) on the DEMOCRACY website.