Forced Collision Come Out Interactive Online Gallery
From the Artistic Director Jason Cross

We are very excited to be presenting Forced Collision. This project is an excellent example of the potential the web plays in the community engaging with art in a direct, practical and personal way.

If you would like to participate or view another web based project check out the Wireless Voices page or go to www.abc.net.au/riverland/

Introduction to Forced Collision
The 2009 Come Out Festival’s printed and online program is interactive and asks you to explore questions, provoking how you think, feel and respond to Festival theme “Colliding Worlds”.

By responding to Festival theme “Colliding Worlds” we are inviting (and challenging) the young people of South Australia to submit images – drawings, photographs, graphic illustrations, paintings – to help create a vast online art gallery.

The printed and online program is your opportunity to create these new stories… You have probably already discovered that by turning the pages of the printed program you can create a series of new images which interact and collide with each other. We invite you to explore the different combinations in the printed program.

With your assistance we would like to build the biggest online version in the world! The live automated online Come Out Gallery will exhibit your images and intentionally “collide” your images with other images from around South Australia and the world to create new Colliding Worlds!

Background to Festival Theme - Colliding Worlds
In 2006 I visited the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute. I was fortunate to witness an exhibition called Colliding Worlds which examined first contact between Aboriginal and White Australians in the western desert from1932-1984. It is (was) an extraordinary and astonishing exhibition which is very confronting and challenging, but provides an honest insight into Australia’s recent history.

I also believe very strongly in the need for artists to advocate for the “mainstreaming” of the Australian Aboriginal story, their ‘ownership’ of their country now called Australia and the truth relating to our shared history.

The exhibition had a very personal effect on me. The Colliding Worlds concept caused me to ask questions from a broader perspective. Here was a concept or theme that was both personal and global.

Colliding Worlds aims to be poetic and provoke questions Colliding Worlds can be thought of from a personal and global perspective Colliding Worlds is relevant to 4 year olds and to 94 year olds

The world and everything that makes up our planet is in a constant state of collision. These collisions can be either positive or negative or both at the same time… For example the sun collides with the earth and humans collide with each other and themselves…

From these colliding worlds new challenges and opportunities arise And with these challenges and opportunities new stories, new ideas, new art...

I look forward to seeing your interpretation of the Colliding Worlds theme online in Forced Collision

How to Participate
All you need to participate in the Forced Collision project is access to a home or school computer and the web.

1. Pick up the Come Out 2009 Printed Program and read the project Forced Collision Description or go to the Forced Collision Project web page which provides background to the “Colliding Worlds” theme.

2. Register on Come Out 2009 website individually or as a class group your intention to participate by clicking on the register button at the top of this page.

3. Create your own images or pictures to upload onto the Come Out website. You can submit paintings, drawings, photographs or graphic designed pictures by scanning or saving these images onto your computer.

4. Login and upload your scanned or saved images via the add my image link on the home page of this website

5. Once submitted, the Come Out Gallery will intentionally “collide” your submission with other images and pictures from South Australia and around the world.

6. Check out the Come Out website for regular changes and additions to Forced Collision