These challenges were set by the panel of judges, and were allocated randomly to the final thirty contestants, who had ten days to complete their response.
What has inspired, nurtured and developed you into the person you are today? Who, what and which location has influenced your ideas, leading you to this point? Images should cast a reflection upon you as an artist, almost as a self portrait, while connecting an understanding of your past, conveying your identity, history and place.
Create one image per day linked to one of the top ten results of Google hot trends: http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
3. Such A Perfect Day – inspired by the Lou Reed song.
What is your idea of a perfect day? Drink Sangria in the park? Feed animals in the zoo? This doesn’t have to be a literal interpretation of a perfect day, but it may be.
Are signs of the times the clocks, watches, sundials or other mechanical timepieces that surround us? Or the constantly changing seasonal clues of snow, fallen leaves, crescent moons or buds? Or is it the fashion of clothes, cars, and lifestyles popular at the moment? Photograph something that you feel represents or is expressive of the signs of the times.
5. Childhood
Create a series of images inspired by a children’s book which you remember from your own childhood. What do you remember from it? How did you feel about it as a child, and how is it relevant now?
6. Ecotones: the places between
In biology, an ecotone is a transition area between two biomes such as forest and grassland. It may be narrow or wide, it may be local or regional, it may appear as a gradual blending of two communities or may manifest itself as a sharp boundary line. Expand on this biological definition of ecotone. Explore the places between.
7. Connection
Show the connection of two people. Is it intimate, or are they passing strangers? Are they in public, or private? Do you know them, or are you observing from outside?
8. Tourist Lab Research
Why do we travel? Can you find reasons people should travel to where you are living, but that are not in your city guide or on your local map?
9. Noise.
We are surrounded by noise – be it the person on the phone sitting next to us on the bus, the workers who set up a new building in town for a big corporation, the baby crying in the supermarket, or the TV news presenter announcing another catastrophe in the world. Noise, coming from the Latin word nausea, is used to describe an excessive, unpleasant sound which disrupts the balance of human life. Is it true or do you think nowadays noise is part of our nature?
How do you interpret the noise, sound? Transpose it into visuals. Look at the noise.
10. Culture Clash.
The modern world jostles with the old world, sometimes comfortably, sometimes uncomfortably. Signs and signals are confused, changed over time, adopted, adapted. Meaning from one time or in one place doesn’t always carry to another time or place. Explore this juxtaposition of cultures visually, in the sense of both time and location.
Mix up images and combine them into collages conveying a sense of your own paradise. Think carefully about the use of colour and content, and make use of the symbolic meaning of the objects and scenes you use.
12. Everything is in the right place
How do you express harmony, the sense of things being well proportioned, or in balance? Or, is nothing ever in the right place for you – in which case, this could be interpreted ironically… or both, depending on which day or what time of day it is…
Architects have always debated what defines a room. Does a room only exist if there are walls, a floor and a window? A new room in London is offering the experience to stay in a room constructed about the Southbank overlooking the Thames in return for reflecting upon their time and logging what they observe, think and what they are affected by while in this space. With all this in mind, what does a room with a view mean in today’s society of 7 billion inhabitants? What defines a room? Is the view just a one way thing?
14. The Question of Digital Art
Answer the question : What is digital art? What, for you, is the definition of digital art? How do you explain digital art? Where does it begin and end? Where does it come from? Where does it go? This is as open-ended as you wish it to be, but still try to answer the question!
15. A challenge based on John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’.
What is your ‘Imagine’? Lennon’s Imagine puts this energy in a positive light. Rather than saying down with the establishment, ‘Imagine’ is about unity and love – something the world could do with more of. Can you make a statement which allows people to have their voice heard, a la ‘Occupy’ but without directly encouraging political hyperbole?
16. Photographer as Alchemist: Transforming Non-precious Metals into Gold
When we closely examine our quotidian life, we can find gold shimmering in the most unlikely of places. Photograph the gold that sparkles and catches your eye and share your new found wealth with a world that might just be blind to such treasure buried in plain sight.
17. Poem, Text
Choose a poem – or write a poem – and make a series of images inspired by it, integrating image and text in a creative / innovative way.
Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai created a famous series of woodblock prints called the Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, depicting the mountain from many different places and distances; in a variety of seasons and weather conditions. The series was so commercially successful, he created a second series of prints called Fuji from the Other Side. The Other Side is employed in many art forms and genres as a metaphorical concept for exploration of difference. Artists all have their own Mt. Fuji: the subject matter they always see, the medium they always rely on, etc. Show us your Fuji from the Other Side.
19. Urban Drama
Show dramatic urban space(s) in an abstract manner. How far can you push the language of architecture and the streets in your compositions? What can you express, what ideas can you articulate by doing so?
Brands like to send out the right message. Using advertising, neon lights, press releases & more, they want to control the way people see them. But there are moments that they lose that control, when we run into brands in a way the company didn’t intend us to..
21. Poison of desire.
As human beings we do a lot of things that aren’t really good/healthy for us, the environment, the sustainability of our economy. We do so out of lust, greed, addiction… A chemical spill, a smoker, a sex worker, an art critic. What is poisonous desire to you?
Compose an image with several objects that are similar in either shape, colour or texture etc. Pay attention on the selection and arrangement of the objects. Invite the viewers to find out the similarities and differences between them. The terms pattern and repetition often focus on formal qualities; pattern in the built or natural environment, repetition of forms to create a sense of visual rhythm. Equally, pattern and repetition could also apply to the qualities one finds in a series, a daily routine, a life practice. What is your repetition, comparison?
23. Film
Think of a film that has inspired you. How can you bring the mood and feeling of that film into still images? Can you evoke something similar, or does the film give you a springboard for your own cinematic journey?
24. Chiaro-scuro or Clair-obscur meaning light and dark.
Using both light and dark, or light and shadow. Like a Caravaggio painting, a German expressionist film or a film noir; the interplay between light and dark can evoke drama, mystery, horror, supernatural and even dislocated feelings in the viewer. It can on the other hand also inspire wonder, awe and magic or show the mundane in a ‘different light’…
25. Space and Play
Show and play with space between objects, and explore the meaning of the space, both personal and public.
How can we make our cities more green? Images in this challenge should raise questions and / or show possible answers.
All of our lives we hear “things were better when… ” Show such a better time and / or what we are doing to destroy good times.
28. Loss
Loss is an unavoidable part of life. Do you show it tenderly, and with compassion? Or do you show it as a raw force of nature, part of our existential lot? This can be interpreted as broadly or as personally as you like.
29. Red
Red is a strong, evocative colour that can represent many different things: Danger, love, anger, passion. Use the colour red as the main theme of an image. The more innovative, metaphorical, creative the image, the better.
30. Today’s Da Vinci
Addictlab is interested in human creativity, and working on a program to find today’s Da Vincis. Leonardo was an inventor as much as an artist, a scientist interested in structure as well as capable of human expression and story telling. Can you rise to this challenge personally, or do you know somebody who is exceptionally creative in more than one way?
