VANCOUVER -- Tweeting as an art form? Or art as a social network?

It could be both, as Twitter intersects art in an exhibition based on social media that opens tonight at Vancouver’s Diane Farris Gallery.

Inspired by social media, the juried show reveals more than the art of our times — it is the story of the digital transformation in how we communicate and relate to one another.

The collection of 100 works by the 40-plus artists chosen for the show documents issues that have arisen with that change, a role Lili Vieira de Carvalho, curator of the show and associate director of the gallery, says art traditionally plays.

“It is pretty relevant,” she said. “It touches many points. We are talking about art but actually ... we are talking about fair use, we are talking about how news is spreading, we are talking about human communications in human relationships.”

The artists’ works go beyond what is hanging on the walls of the gallery. Part of the exhibition is online, another component is the explanations of the artists.

“The statement where they say how they use social media was part of the selection of the works,” said Vieira de Carvalho, who was on the selection committee for the show, entitled Twitter/Art+Social Media, with Hank Bull, executive director of Centre A (Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art); Maria Lantin, director of the Intersections Digital Studios research centre at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Kris Krug, photographer at Static Photography and professor at the Vancouver Film School. The show was the brainchild of Mia Johnson, developer of the Diane Farris Gallery website. It elicited more than 200 submissions, with artists from Bowen Island to Bandung, Jawa Barat, Indonesia.

Vieira de Carvalho said the artists’ statements also show how social media has changed their lives and for many, the way they work.

“[Working as] an artist is such an isolated activity, through social media they can get in touch, exchange experiences,” she said.

The Web also delivers instant exposure for their works, as well as connections.

“Many artists, they say how social media are helping them keep up with their work, because they are more committed to the work, because they are showing, because they have a blog and they have to show something on the blog,” said Vieira de Carvalho. “Or they can just expand their support net through social media.

“They are using everything — they are selling through the Internet, they have their Flickr albums, they blog and they put all that together — everything links to everything.
“It has changed the landscape.”

One work that speaks to the issue of copyright and fair use, ended up as a two-part project — a painting submitted for the show that was painted from a photograph. The painting led to a flurry of online debate over the photographer’s rights to the photo and whether he should receive credit.

The selection committee invited the photographer to join the show — making the display one with two parts, the submission of the selected artist and that of the invited artist. In another project, entitled Do You Like What You See, Toronto artist Sarah Pinder collected lines she found on Craigslist personals and put them in a little booklet together with photographs from her webcam.

“It is very poetic,” said and Vieira de Carvalho of the work, which at $3 a pop for the booklets represent the low end of the price range for the art in the exhibit, which has works ranging up to $1,000.

Another project, one by Megan Smith of England, chronicles Twitter’s dissemination of major news events. One tweet notes Sidney Crosby’s overtime gold-medal winning goal in the U.S.- Canada Olympic hockey game. Another urged citizens of Iran to take to the streets in the postelection unrest and another was the famous tweet that delivered the first news that a plane had gone down on the Hudson River.

“It translates how Twitter is fast communication and personal.” said Vieira de Carvalho. “Translated in art form — almost like a snapshot of the news to a personal level.”

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