Chumblog

Pygmalion @ Kent

The workshop takes place. Nice people, some confusion about what philantropy should be, but Chumbacca is impervious to all that.

Together we come up with the basic idea of Chumbacca as Conceptual Art for Children, which went well, mostly because no one had a clue what I was talking about. Not that we were clear on it either. Basically, we pictured a bunch of installations designed to annoy adults, since adults were annoying us at the moment. But the idea grew on us.

These are our notes

— not meant to be understood; just proof that we actually took the time to think about something. Annick Hillger's notes may be equally obtuse if you weren't there, but we include them here for reference:

22.07.04

brand?
How do you bring Chumbacca’s energy into the product?
Huili wants L.Anderson for kids/art/performance/installation/non-profit

Use Chumbacca to create an imaginary friend
Teacher? (teaches children to build their own friend)
Jester?
Conversational toy

Interactive fiction
Stories/process

Task: Work with the actors
- no instructions
- copy Huili
- brief actors with few characterizations/situation
- monologue/dialogue with others

24.07.04
Chumbacca:
- as a merchandising-product without ever developing the character for a show
- brand: reason to communicate

announcing the product, but the product never appears
marketing-concept

Build up on air
Chumbacca: a character without stories

Target-group?
Do children make up the stories behind the product?
Do they thus create their imaginary friend?
(like picking up Kermit without knowing The Muppet Show and playing with the puppet)

Task:
Write a concept.

26.07.04
Chumbacca is an autobiographical project

Huili presents his concept
concept for a CD-ROM:
- catalogue for an exhibition (for children/for adults?)
- is it a children’s project? (Huili thinks so)
- commission artists who play with the Chumbaccaness
- central piece by Huili (eg. 50 cows in the Tate)

project addresses the child in the human

open up the concept!
CD-ROM? (do that later, one possibility amongst many others)
Put Chumbacca on the web!
– open –
– process
– can be updated all the time
– can grow
– the virus can spread

Commission children

Create Chumbacca Empire without having one (your legions are already out there)
Invite people to steal it
Create a story on the wings of a lot of people

Cross-media project
Event (= a story which is intriguing)

Launch it at once, the way a virus is launched
Steal, copy, cut and paste
Infiltrate, smuggle Chumbacca into communities, onto other websites
Find a hacker, create a virus

Huili has to give away his character
Take his ‘me’ out of the character

Take away authorship
Make Chumbacca alive
Reserve domain Chumbacca.com, create an address on some island

Huili: creator, not the owner of Chumbacca

Task for October:
Get people to make drawings, write scenes etc. (start here)
Search for engines on the net
Search for icons (Chumbacca crescent) on the net
Make a Bible of Chumbacca
Write one episode for TV