CITE Center for Innovation Technology and Evaluation UNM Student Based RFP

CITE - Request for Proposals - CALL TO ARTISTS

Project Overview and Disclaimer

This call for artists is being conducted as a student project through the University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts, Arts Management Program in collaboration with the City of Albuquerque Public Art Urban Enhancement Program. The students of the “Public Art Roadmap” course, FA384.002, including graduate and undergraduate students, seek to use this unique call for proposals as a real life, public art project management experience in conjunction with an opportunity for the finalists’ proposals to be exhibited at the City of Albuquerque history of public art exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum, January – May 2015, as a part of the longer citywide exhibition On the Map: Unfolding Albuquerque Art and Design, www.ABQonthemap.com. This call for artists’ ideas as proposals will (likely) not result in any actual public art commission or work of art being built, however the student choices for best concept will be exhibited and critically discussed in an article as part of the 2015 exhibition. The project is being led by Sherri Brueggemann, UNM-CFA course instructor and City of Albuquerque Public Art Program Manager, with critical analysis and evaluation conducted by joni m palmer, Ph.D. ASLA, Part-Time Faculty, UNM - Dept. of Geography & Environmental Studies. WESTAF is graciously supporting this project for the educational purposes with student use and evaluation of the CaFE™ on-line submission format and process.

Pegasus Global Holdings, the owner of the project site (CITE – Center for Innovation Technology and Evaluation) for this student based project, have given consent to allow their project, site and copyrighted descriptive materials to be used as the location for this conceptual call for public art. All images in this call for artists’ proposals are courtesy of Pegasus Global Holdings and/or its design consultant A&E firm, Perkins+Will. The copyrighted materials are also located on various publicly accessible web pages and may be used as support materials for the purposes of this student based project.

The following Request for Proposals was developed by the FA384.002 students in their 5th and 6th weeks of the fall semester. The class of 11 students will serve as the Art Selection Committee along with a representative of Pegasus Global and/or its design firm. As part of the educational project management process, artists are invited to submit questions, provide feedback and commentary on the process for the students directly to either the course instructor at sbruegge@unm.edu or posted to the class blog at publicartroadmap.tumblr.com.  All feedback will be carefully evaluated and utilized by the students as part of the learning experience.

All artists’ materials submitted for the student based project are, and will remain, the intellectual property of the artists. Only those proposals selected as finalists will be displayed in a public museum setting under a license to display agreement and returned to the artist upon conclusion of the exhibition, spring 2015. The University of New Mexico, the City of Albuquerque, nor Pegasus make claim to the ideas or concepts entered, nor do they offer any form of monetary compensation for participants. Artists who choose to participate in this student based project agree to allow the students the temporary use of their design ideas for educational purposes only. The students’ role in this project is limited to serving as the project Arts Selection Committee members and related class assignments.

Public Art Project Overview

Pegasus Global Holdings is pursuing the development of a “test city” in southern New Mexico. CITE – the Center for Innovation Testing and Evaluation – is designed to replicate an “American mid-sized city of 35,000…complete with an urban core, bedroom and rural living neighborhoods, an airport, civic center and legacy infrastructure.” CITE is being built for the sole purpose of testing technology on a citywide scale with no impact to humans as the city will have an actual population of zero – no people will actually live at CITE. CITE is currently proposed to be a 22 square mile, $500M capital project and will have a unique 50 year lifespan.

The Art Selection Committee recognizes that while temporary housing structures or other simulated towns or cities have been built as façades for other testing purposes in the past, CITE represents an entirely new model for a “test city” and is therefore worthy of public art that connects to the intent and purpose of the facility.

Art Goal or Theme for CITE

By embracing the entire concept of “testing and evaluation” at CITE, artists are encouraged to propose public art for this unique built environment that addresses one or both of the following two concepts:

1)      Art that exemplifies the meaning of “public art” and the role of art in a space, particularly a space without complete, or possibly any, public access – a form of empty space devoid of fulltime human activity, and/or

2)      Art that is a very intentional response to, or interrogation of, the role of public art in relation to its audience; artists must define the proposed audience for the proposed public art at CITE or beyond.

Artwork Location

Artists may propose any site within CITE as an artwork location. For a list of Art Selection Committee springboard ideas, please review the attached “Discussion Sheet” that explores the notion of traditional public art sites versus holistic, or system-wide, approach to “sites”. Artists are encouraged to explore the concept of “high visibility” as part of their site selection.

Budget

Artists must propose their own preliminary budget for the proposed public art, as no allowance has been made for public art at CITE at this time. For review and evaluation purposes, artists are asked to list only four line items for the preliminary budget: Artist Design Fees, Materials & Fabrication, Installation and Project Overhead.

Artist Eligibility

Artists and/or Artist Teams residing in the United States are eligible to apply, which may include fulltime and part-time residents. While CITE is designed to represent a “typical mid-sized American city”, non-American citizens who currently reside in the US are also eligible.

Project Timeline and Selection Process - Deadline – Monday, November 3rd, 2014, 5:00 pm MST

The 11 students of the FA 384.002 class, with representation from Pegasus Global and/or its design firm are serving as the Art Selection Committee. The Committee will review all submissions and select finalists for inclusion in the “On the Map” exhibition by Wednesday, December 10th, 2014

Up to five (5) finalists may be selected. Upon selection of the finalists, the finalists’ information will be provided to the staff of the City of Albuquerque Public Art Urban Enhancement Program for coordinating the inclusion of exhibit worthy materials that must arrive in Albuquerque no later than January 10th, 2014. The exhibition opens January 31, 2015 and runs through April 5, 2015

Application Requirements

Artists must submit the following to be considered responsive and eligible for the exhibition opportunity:

1)      A letter of intent describing the proposed artwork concept and how it addresses the above defined art project goals, not to exceed 4,000 characters including spaces and punctuation.

2)      A current résumé or biography,

3)      An estimated budget that includes only the following four items: Artist(s) Fee, Materials & Fabrication, Installation, and Project Overhead costs, and

4)      One, with up to three (3) images of the proposed design concept; note: images of previous works are not required, but may be used in addition to a proposed concept image to illustrate an idea/technique; each image may be no larger than 3MB per standard CaFE™ terms.

Artists must submit their proposals through CaFE™ at www.callforentry.org following the standard requirements for CaFE™ usage and participation requirements.

Attachments

Student Discussion Sheet

Site Image

Links for more information and images:

http://www.cite-city.com/

http://perkinswill.com/work/cite

http://www.aiaga.org/da_project_submission_detail/1824021-1787229

CITE RFP – Student Discussion Sheet

For this unique project and site, the Art Selection Committee comprised of students and developer representatives are interested in, and wish to share with potential respondents to the RFP, the following city/public art dynamics, in no particular order or preference:

• Sites that are currently planned at CITE that are typical sites for public art, include: an airport, civic/events center, gateways into/between neighborhoods, gateways into the city itself, parks, multi-story civic building downtown, corporate building downtown, major thoroughfares, post office, library, public right-of-way, i.e. sidewalks, roads and utility easements.

• Unique sites at CITE that are not typical sites for public art, include: the research test monitoring building, test monitoring locations within the overall Field Lab and, ultimately, the entire city as the site.

• Art concepts that could provide artistic “additive” methods for enhancing the proposed levels of infrastructure, i.e. creative approaches for placing solar panels, in a manner that does not change the core infrastructure need for testing purposes, but lends aesthetic enhancements to the core infrastructure project.

• The notions of “high visibility”, “forward thinking”, and “social places” in an environment that does not retain fulltime citizens, especially regarding the artist’s choice of site(s) within CITE.

• Physical location vs. virtual location and the opportunity for audience experience of public art in either/both manners, given the specific types of access available to CITE.

• Kinetic art, or art that responds to the movements of the desert environment even though people are not likely to be around to see the environmental responses.

• Public art that can be experienced in the same way the entire Test City is going to be experienced.

• Art that can be “tested” or contribute to the testing of other technologies.

• Art that is driven by the test data collected, assuming certain proprietary data can be made available for artistic purposes.

The facility developers have contributed the following:

• Landscape art - different forms of landscaping, such as mounds or berms that while pleasing to the eye will also be functional, meaning composed in size, shape, and materials to absorb radio frequency, noise, or other emissions which may occur as a result of the testing that may occur.

• CITE is a Test City sitting atop an underground control complex – similar to Disney World in Orlando – where all the “people activities” will take place. This underground complex, despite being underground must have access points and ventilation systems which support its activities, but do not intrude on the CITE’s landscape.

Questions about this project may be submitted via the class project blog publicartroadmap.tumblr.com or directly to the course instructor (sbruegge@unm.edu) and will be answered weekly so that all students may participate in the answer process.