Since 2005, I have been developing an approach to blogging as a form of art.
This method involves a regular, iterative cycle of action and interaction through "real-life" encounters and online blog posting. It generates a temporary public sphere around a particular issue, location or cultural event, deepening attention and generating new insights at the level of the everyday.
Projects:
Two key early projects were Bilateral Kellerberrin (2005), and Bilateral Petersham (2006) - which were generated through residencies - one in a small country town, and the other in a city suburb.
My method of blogging as art was further developed through Bon Scott Blog (2008), which investigated the phenomenon of the cult of AC/DC singer Bon Scott.
This was followed by Environmental Audit (2010), in which the blog was used as a means of connecting social interactions with visitors and workers at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. This project employed blogging in conjunction with the production of a series of diagrammatic prints and drawings, as well as an evolving gallery installation.
Yeomans Project (2011-14), in collaboration with Ian Milliss, used blogging as a research tool to explore the cultural and agricultural significance of Australian design innovator PA Yeomans.
Other projects employing blogging as a medium for artmaking include:
Gruffling (2009), a project about goats;
Push and Pull Redfern (2009), in collaboration with Nick Keys and Astrid L'Orange, which used blogging as a way to experientially document an enactment of Allan Kaprow's Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hoffman (1963).
TENDING (2010-11) in collaboration with Diego Bonetto and Ross Gibson, which tracked the slow development of a community garden at Sydney College of the Arts.
Writing about Blogging as Art
Ihlein, Lucas, 2010, Framing Everyday Experience: Blogging as Art, PhD thesis, Deakin University. The thesis won the Alfred Deakin Medal for Best Doctoral Thesis in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2011.
Ihlein, Lucas, 2014 "Blogging as Art, Art as Research", (chapter on Bilateral Petersham), in Material Inventions: Applying Creative Arts Research, edited by Barbara Bolt and Estelle Barrett, IB Tauris.
Barrett, Estelle 2013, "Materiality, Affect, and the Aesthetic Image" pp. 63-73, in Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt, Carnal Knowledge: Towards a 'New Materialism' through the Arts, IB Tauris.
Hoskin, Teri and Ihlein, Lucas, 2013, "In conversation: Teri Hoskin and Lucas Ihlein on Bilateral Kellerberrin", in Unsitely aesthetics: uncertain practices in contemporary art, edited by Maria Miranda, published by Errant Bodies Press.
Ihlein, Lucas, 2010, To Follow Things As I Encounter Them: Blogging, Art and Attention, 127 Prince Journal.
Reflections on blogging art projects by Thea Rechner and Lisa Kelly (in relation to some ideas about documentation and performance art by Philip Auslander and Amelia Jones).
Ihlein, Lucas, 2007, Bilateral Blogging, International Journal of the Arts in Society.
Discussion around Bilateral Kellerberrin and a critique of relational aesthetics.
Lucas Ihlein, "Public Art as Public Conversations" in Harmonic Tremors: Aesthetic Interventions in the Public Sphere, edited by Sarah Rainbird. Melbourne: Gasworks Arts Park, 2009. 33-44.
Hindmarsh, Laura, 2009, "Art as Public Forum: The Art of Blogging", UN Magazine
Ihlein, Lucas, 2009, "Two Types of Blogs", Bilateral Blog.
Ihlein, Lucas, 2009, "The Blogger's Voice and the Wave of Learning", Bilateral Blog.
Ihlein, Lucas, 2009, "What Makes a Good Blog?", Bilateral Blog.
Ihlein, Lucas, 2009, "How can art practice be research?", Bilateral Blog.
Article discussing place blogging by Keri Glastonbury, "Rough and Tumblr: Blogging Newcastle", in LINQ Connected Writing and Scholarship, Vol 42-43, 2016.
Ihlein, Lucas, 2018, "Blogging as Art: Life Writing Online", in Eades, Quinn, and Brien, Donna Lee, Offshoot: Contemporary Life Writing Methodologies and Practice, UWAP.