MozFest 2014: Spotlight on "Art and Culture of the Web"

This is the fourth post in a series featuring interviews with the 2014 Mozilla Festival “Space Wranglers,” the curators of the many exciting programmatic tracks slated for this year’s Festival.
For this edition, we chatted with Kat Braybrooke, Paula Le Dieu, and Erik Nelson, the Space Wranglers for the Art and Culture of the Web track. Participants in this track will explore the programs, practices and inspirations of open and networked digital art forms.
What excites you most about your track?
This is the first time that Mozfest will be featuring the extraordinary role of artists and curators in exploring the affordances of the open web, so we’re really pulling out all the shots to make this track something special. We have more than 25 artists and organisations bringing their work and provocations to Mozfest. Every one of them is creating work that not just invites but requires participation, and as such breaks down the walls between artists and audiences. This is a track that puts you in the middle of artistic and cultural practice with the open web as a lens. From Mozfest’s first ever gallery, OPEN STUDIO, to a set of very hands-on artistic and cultural heritage skillshares, we’re definitely going to be “breaking the Internets” together!

Who are you working with to make this track happen?
We are lucky enough to work with an amazing and eclectic set of artists and organisations at the forefront of arts and culture on the open web this year. Due to space limitations, we could only take on about 25% of the submissions proposed, so the ones we are featuring are of extremely high caliber. Whether it is the extraordinary folks at archive.org collecting web culture and making it available as the creative home of contemporary culture, or new kinds of collaborations between Europeana, London’s National Archives, Creative Commons and Rhizome holding interactive skill-share sessions, or the unique experiences created by ginger coon in Canada and the delightful playfulness of Parapara in Japan, the global workshops and experiences on offer will truly help everyone realise their own creative potentials.

How can someone who isn’t able to attend MozFest learn more or get involved in this topic?
Join us at our track’s hub where we will be collecting together the tools, featuring artist and partner collaborations and keep everyone up to date about the track leading up to, during and following Mozfest. We can’t wait to see the creative and crazy things everyone comes up with together in London!

Inspired?

Head on over to the MozFest site to register!