WEBEXPEDITION18 Never Stop The Exploring

Bikini Lines is a proposed massive, mixed media installation inspired by a lack of standardized nuclear disaster reporting, in particular the panic that set in over Tokyo following the March 2011 Earthquake, Tsunami and subsequent meltdown.

With special permission from the Marshallese Government, the team’s main focus is on painting the Cactus Dome. In doing so, will create the World’s Largest Painting on the historically significant & sublimely remote Runit Island (no, seriously!) while documenting the process in film, photography and writing (for the history books!). 

The colloquially named Cactus Dome, (the ‘canvas’), is a 107m wide (350 foot) dome built over the Cactus Test atomic blast crater in the Marshall Islands which encases the radioactive debris from Bikini and surrounding Atolls. Its surface area is roughly 96,600 square feet; the current record holder for world’s largest painting is 86,000 square feet.  

Most importantly, all art, design, on-site documentation and financing will be crowd-sourced. This means that the artist chosen to design the world’s largest painting will be selected democratically by Bikini Lines supporters, as will the videographer who will direct our documentary, the bloggers and writers who will cover the event live and the photographer(s) who will lend their sharp eye to our cause. Winning artists, videographers, photographers and writers will be invited to join us, all expenses paid.

The final piece will be easily viewable in Google Earth when they get around to re-mapping the area. How cool is that!? Imagine loading Google Earth or Maps in the future and showing your friends and family what you helped create.

And there’s more: the Bikini Lines team will shop around our finished film to international broadcasters, but instead of collecting money from said broadcasters, any monies taken in from film sales will be donated directly to the Ashinaga Foundation, which helps orphaned children worldwide. By changing the way big media is created, we can change the rules with how it’s distributed.

The Bikini Lines Production Team is currently taking submissions via IndieGoGo for which art will be painted on the Dome, the videographer who will join as director of the accompanying feature length documentary, and the official on-site photographer and writer. Bikini Lines is meant to be a massive collaboration of people from around the world, and all art (as mentioned above) will be chosen democratically via open online contest. Bikini Lines will be micro-financed via IndieGoGo (an online collaborative micro-financing platform) via artist submissions and personal and corporate donations.

At any point after paying the inexpensive $25 submission fee artists (designers, videographers, photographers and writers) may submit their proposal via email or direct upload. Said proposals will be hosted by Flickr, Scribd & Userfarm. The most discussed & favorited proposals will be shortlisted.

The underlying goal of this project is twofold: primarily, to raise money for children orphaned in the 2011 Tohoku tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster; secondly, to challenge the reasoning behind the creation and distribution of media through Conscientious Art & Adventure.

Interested in joining? Just check out their IndieGoGo campaign or visit http://www.bikinilines.net/index.html for information on how you can get involved.

Authored by Nikola Lazarevic

Web Designer, Blogger, M.Sc in Electronic Engineering from Nis, Serbia. Founder of webexpedition18.com. You can find me on Twitter.