Cyber-connected ClayScope Exhibition Launches with Support from Twitter

This week we are highlighting a physical show gone digital called ClayScope Santa Fe put on by the recently formed collective of ceramic artists called ClayScope. This group took friendships formed online and combined ceramic forces in Santa Fe, New Mexico and beyond.

A few of the artists in the exhibition have garnered micro-fame on the app Periscope, owned by Twitter, a tool that allows average people to broadcast their lives (or pottery practices) in real time – like a personal TV show. Field, Celani, and Ortiz have a combined audience of nearly 30,000 followers and attracted the attention of the emerging social network’s core development team. Periscope sent a representative from San Francisco to Santa Fe to attend the closing reception of Clay Scope to show their support for the artist’s passion and craft, and to celebrate their online success using the emerging technology. Periscope technologists are watching the pottery community, who is using the app in unique way – forming a collective, branding with logos and hashtags, and selling art.

ClayScope Santa Fe Installation Shot

The members of ClayScope break from the standard mold by inviting thousands of people into their studios digitally. The social networks are moving the “physical studio tour” into a virtual one and in doing so, they are infusing a sense of intimacy into the online experience. The platforms offer a new frontier for developing a passionate audience and selling pottery in an age when the craft is struggling to advance.

ClayScope explains, “The Internet has offered a new format to the centuries-old comradery of ceramics – transforming physical communities to digital ones and vice versa.”