Country: Poland

Organization: Turlej Foundation

Idea: IMAGINE is a global ART action realized through the means of internet. The main objective is to encourage people all around the world to self expression/creativity and global cooperation in drawing one virtual picture. The final result will be an visual expression of individual creators to build the first ever global art-work in the shared cyber space. The picture will be painted out of a single dot - symbolically free of dimensions - to fill a pre-selected shape of a circle. In a natural way a mandala will be formed, the symbol of our universe, the symbol of our creative potential as human beings, and at the same time expression of our most inner wish for harmony and unity.

How do you do it: The picture will be accesible for the course of one week through an internet and will be drawn from a single dot. Each internet-user have an ooportunity to add new 'dots' in a chosen color and place, out of which larger shapes will be formed when recognized by a computer. The final result will be a filled up circle, in a natural way similar to mandala, a symbol of universe. Each participant will be able to see directly the effect of his work in a chozen area of the picture, and every few hours the entire picture will be reloaded so the global picture appears. The action will be accompanied by a large public media campaign and portals from participating countries will be encouraged to place large screens so that general public gets involved.

Innovation: IMAGINE is the first ever global ART-ACTION, the first global common internet action of that scale (up to 2 mln. end-users may get involved). It will raise the awareness of each individual as a member of a global community that shares the same idea. It's a mutual people's collaboration that proves also the potential of technology and the common ground for science and art. It brings up also the idea of using virtual reality for education. Just IMAGINE that people all around the world will draw one picture!

Impact: The action will involve both internet users and general public despite their age. We expect that people will join the action and become internet users as well as we expect families to get involved. In addtition to individual contribution also the national contribution will be recorded. Each person from each country involved will know how many users from his/her country are on-line at that moment and how many have participated already. With a more sophisticated internet application it will also be possible to enter the virtual picture and find other users on-line or even communicate with them via a chat (if the participant is registered. The closing day will be on Sunday so it may become a kind of a national holiday too.

Ethical Action: IMAGINE that you know that people around the globe will paint a huge painting together. It's sounds fascinating as knobody knows what will be the result. You may add your own dots, observe the picture evolving and observe the scale of the action (follow the scores - '1 milion people participated already'. When you enter the virtual world you may find a person from the remotest part of the globe adding his/her dot to the picture. The picture is a visualisation of the idea UNITY IN DIVERSITY. All the people will gather around one idea. You may follow the results on large wall screens in cities and discover countries and places on a world's map getting involved. You may also find a person via chat. It's an afirmation of human creativity.

Replication: We hope to repeat the art action every year but we can see several other applications for the global utilisation of internet and virtual reality. First of them is education. At the moment the internet is used by children mainly for playing games whereas it could evolve in more educational pruposes such as virtual gardens or virtual simulations from all disciplines. It could make communication between groups much easier too.

Sustainability: It has a chance to inspire both social art actions and internet applications such as the one to use 'resting' computers for calculation activities and building clusters. The topic is under research by large computer companies such as IBM for example that might use the action as a test for their applications, later used in medicine, meteorology and large-scale simulations. We expect that these companies will be interested in collaboration.

Position in the Ethics Mosaic of Solutions:

Factor: Individualism

Principle: Revealing common ideals, principles, and language