The talk will address the questions at the heart of this project. Is the visual aspect of Wikipedia so lacking and dated because it could only use freely licensed images? Or is it that images have to become “historical” to become removed, objective, factual, and therefore applicable to the Wikipedia guidelines? Is the Wikipedia project really inviting visual artists to contribute their work to the commons? Or is visual work inherently less collaborative? As the project evolves it exposes the myths and biases behind these questions and reveals the surprising and complicated dynamics of open culture.

Hence this talk centres on the principles, challenges and limits of participation. By looking at specific participatory art projects this presentation attempts to put up for discussion a number of criteria for success and failure of participation. What is the artist’s role in participatory processes? What role does technology play in enabling and fostering participation and mapping and communicating processes? How much autonomy do participatory processes require? How open or closed should processes be? And to what extend can participatory art go beyond intervention and have a lasting effect on people’s lives? The talk summarizes the insights into current a social and participatory art practice that have been gained through interviews with artists and artists groups such as Torolab, Department for Public Appearances, Fernando Garcia Dory and others, and in particular analyses the ‘Suomenlinna Money Lab’ project by Christian Nold.