YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and YouTube have announced the launch of YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video. A collaboration with HP, YouTube Play was conceived to discover and showcase the most exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of online video. Open to the global online community, the competition is accepting submissions now through July 31st.

A jury of experts from the worlds of art, design, film, and entertainment will select up to 20 videos submitted from around the world to be presented at the Guggenheim Museum on October 21, 2010, with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. The works will also be available to a worldwide audience on the special YouTube Play channel at youtube.com/play.

YouTube Play is just the latest in YouTube’s run of innovative events. In 2009, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra gave everyone with access to the Internet a chance to play in Carnegie Hall, and in 2007, the CNN/YouTube debates gave everyone a chance to ask a question of U.S. presidential candidates. With YouTube Play, YouTube expands upon the traditional curatorial process in a way that gives every video creator a shot at international artistic recognition.

Upload Creative Video
The goal of this project is to discover and celebrate work that expands the notion of what video can be. Submissions may include any form of creative video, including art, animation, motion graphics, narrative and non-narrative work, or entirely new art forms. YouTube Play hopes to attract innovative, original, and surprising videos from around the world, regardless of genre, technique, background, or budget. Participants can be art students or amateur video makers as well as creative professionals. To help video creators generate the best possible submissions, the YouTube Play channel will post HP Make tutorials, featuring editing, sound, and other video-making techniques.

How to Participate
Participants are invited to submit new or existing videos created within the last two years to a YouTube Play channel at youtube.com/play. The maximum running time for a video is ten minutes. Each participant will be asked to provide a written statement regarding his or her work. Only one video per participant will be considered. The deadline for submission is July 31, 2010, 12:00 p.m., Pacific Time, 3:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time.

Selection Process
The Guggenheim will identify up to 200 videos which will be viewable on the YouTube Play channel at youtube.com/play. From the 200, up to 20 videos will be selected by a jury of experts, comprised of distinguished artists, filmmakers, designers, and musicians, to be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York during a special event on October 21, 2010.

Check out the video below for more details, and/or visit YouTube.com/Play.

*above: Design by Jeff Baxter adapted from a photograph by David Heald; © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 2010

*above: Design by Jeff Baxter; Courtesy of Google

*Images courtesy of The Guggenheim.