The Popwalk phone application is being used by artists, educators, and museums to exhibit artwork and cultural content all over the world. Here are some examples of how it is being used.

Artists

The Popwalk application started as a project for artists to exhibit videos and animations in specific locations. Since then, it has grown to include site-specific dance, theater and music, art, and architectural history, as well as educational projects. But at it’s core, Popwalk is a venue for exhibiting digital works of art in specific locations. Here is an explanation of how artists may use Popwalk:

Submitting Works to Popwalk:

Artists wanting to submit works to Popwalk must go to www.popwalkapp.com, register as a user, and then follow the link under the artist tab for submitting artwork. The work displayed on Popwalk must first be stored on YouTube. The YouTube link is then included in the submission. If you have questions about works exhibited on Popwalk, or want to see a sample work on site, please contact us.

Jurying

Popwalk is a juried exhibition opportunity. Works exhibited on Popwalk are considered public works of art and must conform to the submission guidelines. You can find those here.

Curator

Popwalk is a powerful tool for curators, in putting together exhibitions and in developing the interpretive materials for exhibitions.

Curating Work Anywhere

Popwalk allows digital works of art: animation, film, recordings of performances, etc. to be exhibited anywhere. These works must be site-specific. Within that important parameter, Popwalk allows you to present works anywhere (well, anywhere that has a cell signal). If you have ideas for exhibitions that need to exist in down a city street, in a public square, or in a park, you are able to build an exhibition that viewers can experience in those places. Consider the world as your gallery to curate. Popwalk has also been used to re-exhibit site-specific performance works in the location of the original performance, allowing the work to retain more of the original intent, by keeping it on location.

Interpretive Materials for Curation

Popwalk can also be used to present interpretive materials for physical artworks. Particularly if you have artworks displayed over a large geographic area, Popwalk can be used to create a map, give directions to the work, and supply information onsite about the artwork. The application is easy to update as your exhibit venues or sites change.

Educator

Popwalk has been used as a tool for delivering educational content, for allowing students to share their work with fellow students, and for educators to share their research with students and the public.

Delivering Class Content

Popwalk is a powerful tool for instructors whose course material can take the students to resources outside of the classroom. Because Popwalk allows videos to be exhibited in specific locations, instructors can deliver the educational content right at the location that is most pertinent. For example, a figure drawing class was created in Rome, Italy that uses the sculptures and paintings on location, in Rome, to help teach the course. There is a blog post about this project that you can read here. This is an example of one of the videos:

This video can be accessed on Popwalk, only in Piazza Ugo la Malfa in Rome, where the monument for Mazzini can be found (pictured below). This lesson connects directly to the site and can only be accessed there.

Sharing Student Work

Students can also share their work through Popwalk. One Art History Instructor had all of the students create a final video of the research that they had completed throughout the semester. They wrote papers about a specific monument or building. These were edited into videos that included the student reading their paper, with any important visual information included. Because the videos were presented right in front of the subject of the paper, those images did not need to be included! Here is an example of one of the student’s videos. It can be seen in the church San Paolo Fuori Le Mura, in Rome.

Sharing Research with the Public

Popwalk is a powerful tool for educators to connect instruction to a specific location. But it can also be used by professors to share their research on location. Here is an example of an art historian that has used Popwalk to share her research in Naples, Italy.

Public Arts Administrator

Public art collections are using the Popwalk application as way to gain audiences, communicate programming, and gather participation statistics. Here is an example of How the Texas Tech Public Art Program is using Popwalk:

Popwalk is a powerful tool for sharing information about public art, but Popwalk can do much more than just this for public art collections. Here are some of the things that it can do for you:

Gathering Statistics

We understand that, for many arts organizations, obtaining funding is helped greatly by, or even dependent upon, gathering participation statistics. For public art programs, this kind of data might be impossible to gather. Through Popwalk, you are able to gather statistics of those who come to see the works, as well as reactions to the works; both qualitative and quantitative data.

Getting on Peoples Phones

There is good reason for public arts organizations to want to give the public easy access to their works on cellphones. But most public arts organizations don’t have access to the expertise or funding needed to create an app. If that hurtle is overcome, often the app languishes after a couple of years, as the staff with technical expertise to update technology and content are not always available. Popwalk can give you all of these.

Sharing/Building Audience

Because Popwalk is used by multiple audiences across a large area, it is poised to become a cultural resource that has the ability to develop new audiences for cultural programs happening all over. The app user in Lubbock, Texas will be able to get a glimpse of the art in Salt Lake City, and will be encouraged to go see it!

Instantly Updateable

Popwalk is being used by many public arts programs to replace the old paper maps. This doesn’t just save on paper, but also allows for a map that is constantly updateable. As soon as a new work enters the collection, the map can be updated. Even impermanent works can be easily (and inexpensively) be taken down and put up on the Popwalk map.

Technical and Artistic Support

At Sites Set for Knowledge, we have put together a team of people that are both technically savvy and artistically knowledgeable. We understand that what makes Popwalk unique is it’s high quality of artistic experience. That is why we have people that can help you to use Popwalk in a way that strengthens the art experience.

Help Getting Started

We understand that all arts organizations have particular circumstances and resources. Popwalk is made so that those organizations with initiative can start using the service with very little expense. For those with less time and manpower to expend, we can take your ideas and see them from start to finish, and even take care of the updates ourselves.

Historian

Popwalk was originally created as a tool for sharing digital artwork in specific locations, but it was quickly picked up as a tool that could share many other kinds of cultural information. History is a particularly good fit for the application, as it allows videos to be accessed in specific locations. these videos might be explanations of historical events that happened on the site or other interpretive materials.

And historians have used Popwalk in a number of ways already. Art historians have used it to create videos of historical information that are important to the place where the video is being viewed. Artists have used it to create audio tours of interesting historical locations. Architectural historians have created placed audio descriptions of famous buildings, onsite. Here is one example:

This video can be accessed right on location at the Corpus Christi seawall (pictured below).

Museum/Gallery Director

Museums and galleries are in a particular position to benefit from using the Popwalk application. Here are some of the things that Popwalk can offer such organizations.

Break Outside of Your Walls

Popwalk allows museums and galleries to exhibit content outside of the walls of the museum. In this way you can extend the reach of your content to include locations and places almost anywhere. Utilize your expertise and collections to serve your community is a bigger, broader way!

Building Brand Identity

As you put up content on Popwalk outside the walls of your institution, your are building a brand that has reach into the community. You will serve the community more effectively.

Technical and Artistic Support

At Sites Set for Knowledge, we have put together a team of people that are both technically savvy and artistically knowledgeable. We understand that what makes Popwalk unique is it’s high quality of artistic experience. That is why we have people that can help you to use Popwalk in a way that strengthens the art experience.

Help Getting Started

We understand that all arts organizations have particular circumstances and resources. Popwalk is made so that those organizations with initiative can start using the service with very little expense. For those with less time and manpower to expend, we can take your ideas and see them from start to finish, and even take care of the updates ourselves.