We recently launched My Yard Our Message, a project that asks you to design yard signs, vote on them, and display them in your yard. The project is open for your designs any time before the end of June. We have a design template for making the signs as easy as possible.  Mnartists.org is one of the project sponsors along with the Walker Art Center and has a great article about project.

I also posted some of the tech details on how the website was built and the Facebook App we’ve built to show the signs on profiles and pages.

So far we have 47 signs submitted in the project. Here is just a sample of them:

Use your Superpowers, VOTE!
by Jane Rainwater

Ecology Flag
by Christy Sayre

Ugly partisanship
by Emmet Byrne

Convention
by Andy Pressman

Karl Rove, former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bush, is now columnist for Newsweek. This week, he offers some tips on what he calls “the Dem’s knife fight”:

Conventions are elaborate made-for-TV productions. We live in a culture of the visual. Every moment and every event should be scripted. The media will complain about it, but think through what messages you want and when you want them. This script must be visually powerful and interesting enough to keep the cameras on your candidate and not somewhere else. Make the spectacle personal. The Al and Tipper Gore kiss, for instance, did him a lot of good. And be sure to provide fresh content all the time. In the era of cable TV, talk radio, the blogosphere and YouTube, someone is watching and talking all the time. If you’re not pressing content into all available channels, someone else will.

(emphasis added)

This is a confirmation of one of the core beliefs of the The UnConvention: the scripted nature of the conventions is meant to guide people into a particular narrative. At this point it seems likely the Republican Convention will be the rehearsed, scripted event, since the Republican Nominee is already known to be John McCain. (The Democratic Convention on the other hand, is anyone’s guess.)

The second point is that Rove points out that if the scripted convention doesn’t fill all the voids of media coverage, someone else will. And, of course, The UnConvention is hoping for a few voids that we will fill in a much more constructive way than a scripted convention could.

At last week’s UnConvention planning meeting, we heard from Ali Momeni, a professor at the University of Minnesota. Ali’s class, “Art for the People / Art on Wheels”, is in the process of building three mobile projection units, seen below. In brief, the units consist of a three-wheeled work bike, a 5000 lumen projector, camera, electric generator, and speakers. The design is inspired by some of the work done by the Graffiti Research Lab’s Laser Tag.

Ali’s class has been documenting their process on their class blog.One of the very interesting things they have up there is a panel discussion with some artists, lawyers, and police officers to discuss the legalities of outdoor projection: what buildings can be projected on, what are liabilities for traffic, etc. Very interesting to anyone that’s ever done or contemplated doing outdoor projection.

Also noted from the class blog is the course schedule:

1/3 :: Build three mobile broadcast units
2/3 :: Prepare visual and sonic content for projection and broadcast
3/3 :: Make outings, spread beauty, collaborate with The Unconvention 

I think it is safe to say we’ll be seeing more from Ali and his class.

It should also be noted that the GRL is going to be at the Spark Festival, going on this week. Their lecture is happening Wednesday the 27th at 12:30 in the Regis Center. If you’re a fan of the GRL, this is a great opportunity.