Co-Modify by @Platea — Online Public Art Collective to Enact Fictional Sponsorships on Social Media Networks :: May 3-9, 2009 :: Participate on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Instructions here.

Online public art collective @Platea will be performing Co-Modify, a commentary on and exploration of the commodification of social media. From May 3 through 9, a number of performers will be enacting a fictional sponsorship by a company of their choosing and embedding that company’s brand into their daily social media activities. Via a collective online performance focused on Twitter and Facebook accounts, @Platea performers will be enacting a world where everything we do online has monetization value and a world where, more and more, embedded and targeted advertising has become part and parcel with our daily lives.

“In marketing, there’s this notion of finding that segment of one, i.e., catering to the individual, rather than broad groups. It’s more of a theoretical ideal, like the horizon or the perfect circle,” writes An Xiao, director and founder of @Platea. “And yet, embedded, contextual advertising is bringing us closer to that reality. All the data about ourselves that we upload to Facebook and blogs, everything we type about ourselves in Gmail, the little quips and jokes and flirtations and family photos and comments between friends — all these little lifestreams can be aggregated into a picture of who we are and, importantly, what we might spend money on.”

In the open-source and open-information culture of Web 2.0, Co-Modify will be a statusing (online happening), free-form public art performance that anyone is welcome to join. It will span multiple social media streams, including but not limited to Twitter and Facebook. An Xiao, for example, plans to be sponsored by Pepsi: “My profile picture on Facebook for the week will be me drinking a can of Pepsi. Every now and then, I’ll post a status update like ‘An is sitting in Central Park and drinking some Pepsi Zero.’ Not every post, of course, will be sponsored, but, as with celebrity endorsements, my sponsored actions will be embedded seamlessly with my regular activities.”

@Platea is a collective of individuals interested in the power of public art carried out in the digital megacity of social media. Their most recent project, The Great Yawn, was a Twitter-based flash mob of some 100 individuals, including contemporary artists Rachel Perry Welty, Matt Held, Joanie San Chirico, Nina Meledandri and others. On March 31 at 1:15 pm EST, @Platea members tweeted a collective yawn, from Los Angeles to New York to London to Tasmania, to explore the mundane and monumental elements of Twitter. The event attracted the attention of a number of art world blogs, including Bad at Sports, Hrag Vartanian, and New Curator.

@Platea was founded by artist An Xiao, a photographer and digital media artist exploring issues in contemporary social media. Her Twitter-based art projects have been featured with the Brooklyn Museum, the Guardian UK, ArtNews and NYFA Current. Its steering committee is comprised of members in two continents.