The best designs will be 3D printed by Williamsburg-based Voodoo Manufacturing before being incorporated into the babel installation. Any artists who have their designs selected for Babel will be fully credited at the curated booths accompanying brochure as well as given credit on the Outsider Art Fair website. The first place prize given to the best design will receive a $1000 honorarium. The entire Babel project and installation space will be judged and curated by independent artist and designer Leah Gordon.
“We are in search of contemporary, modern and ancient towers; industrial or religious; fantastical or utilitarian; brutalist or gothic…from air traffic control towers to bell towers to tower blocks and skyscrapers. Imaginary cities and surreal structures have long been the domain of many outsider artists. This exhibition aims to create a collective multi-authorial installation that descends from the Fluxus mail art movement. ‘Babel’ is the 21st century mail art for the digital world,” explains Wide Open Arts.
The designs will be separated into four individual bounding boxes with towers and buildings of similar size. When submitting the final design, the artist must designate which of the bounding boxes their design is intended for. Because of space and cost the chances of a building being printed is higher if it has been designed for some of the smaller display boxes. There will be four different bounding boxes:
A.) 3.5 x 3.5 x 12 cm (1.3 inch x 1.3 inch x 4.7)
B.) 5.5 x 5.5 x 15 cm (2.1 inch x 2.1 inch x 5.9 inch)
C.) 8 x 8 x 25 cm (3.14 inch x 3.14 x 9.8 inch)
D.) 12 x 12 x 30 cm (4.7 inch x 4.7 inch x 11.8 inch)
In order to submit a tower, digital artists simply need to produce a 3D printable CAD file in STL format of a tower or tall structure of their own design. The project must be titled and include a brief 250 word explanation of what the tower design means and why it was designed. The project description must be saved as a PDF and include the designer’s full name, title, email address, descriptor text and which specific bounding box category the work was designed for. Once completed, the designer simply needs to email the STL and PDF of the design to outsiderartfair@voodoomfg.com and raissa@outsiderartfair.com. All files must be sent as downloadable links via Dropbox or Google Drive, NOT as attached files. The submitted files must be labelled:
BABEL_FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME_PROJECTTITLE_BOUNDINGBOXLETTER (A, B, C or D)