Imagine a 1000-foot chainlink fence at the Oakland waterfront adorned with dramatic 6-foot tall pictures taken by Oakland photographers—telling powerful stories about the extraordinary people, remarkable places and urgent issues facing the City. The Oakland Fence Project is a public art experience with three primary components: an interactive documentary installation, an A/R mobile cinema app, and a participatory photo exhibit online—elements of a city-wide initiative that includes artist residencies, maker curriculum, and a creative marketplace—all designed to bring people together to build a more vibrant, resilient city.
Think about audiences interacting with those photographs—either by holding up a mobile phone to any image and watching it come to life with video, music, & spoken word, or through a real life guided photo tour. This is the vision of the interactive public installation that integrates with a unique online Fence, where anyone can:
- make donations and volunteer time to the organizations that inspire them (facilitating new members and strengthening community)
- learn more about the issues they care about (linking audiences to Oakland’s open datasets and encouraging engagement through learning)
- contribute their own pictures to the Fence (crowdsourcing storytelling from the community alongside the work of award-winning mediamakers)
The Oakland Fence project is replicable in any city.