Invite an Indiana University researcher whose lab is working on a COVID vaccine for young children, to pledge to license his work via the Open Covid Pledge.
The Project:
A 1-page comic illustrating why one Indiana University researcher should license his lab’s work via the Open Covid Pledge. We emailed it to him with a note about how much we admire his work and a recommendation for how to print the image.
It didn’t generate a response from the researcher, but the project helped me build my image-making skills, and I learned a lot about the software I used to create it. I’d never made a visual narrative like this before!
What skills or perspectives did the collaborators bring to this?
I made this drawing mostly independently – but it was inspired directly by a comic that one of the other groups drafted to send to researchers at the Salk Institute. Theirs also started with the famous quote from Dr. Salk. I liked their idea so I made a new and expanded version, tailored for a different researcher.
We’re hoping to create a massive collage of tattooed people from the McGill community (or another university). It’s a fun way to show the admin that people support the FTV mission. We find the faces to say a lot more than a list of signatures on a petition.
The Project:
We asked our friends to send photos of their skin and gave them FTV tattoos.
The hopeful objective would be to show how just one university (or person at a university) cannot do this alone. It takes everyone to work together to solve a global problem. By sending this to the university they can see this in a fun and engaging way that will hopefully start a conversation about signing on to the Open Covid Pledge.
The Project:
A game similar to A Barrel of Monkeys.
The game pieces are the logos of different universities that alone will not reach to free the vaccine from the ‘barrel’.
I think a surprising element of this is the nostalgia of the game for some people, and hopefully just bring a smile to their face and know this is a serious issue but it can be discussed with an open mind.
What would be your next steps, building on this idea, if you had a million dollars and all the time and skills in the world?
Creating this and sending to all the universities/people we have talked to so they are all ‘linked’ together would be amazing. Sharing on social media and tagging the universities to play virtually and encouraging others to sign on as them being the missing link to freeing the vaccine.
Activists from the Free the Vaccine project stage a photo to urge the university to adopt open licensing for COVID-19 research
Objective:
We wanted to raise awareness and create public spectacle as part of a larger aim of engaging with Columbia on many fronts in trying to have them sign the Open COVID Pledge. The groups we seek to reach in building our case of support for #FreeTheVaccine includes reaching out to students, professors, researchers, alumni, community members, and anyone else who might be interested in having Columbia act as a leader in the area of making any future vaccine research accessible to not only it’s communities, but to the broader public.
The Project:
Columbia’s Alma Mater Statue Dons Surgical Mask for an Accessible COVID-19 Vaccine
NEW YORK, NY, May 19, 2020 – Alma Mater, the “nourishing mother” of Columbia University’s student body, sported an oversized surgical mask, sash, and vaccine bottle this weekend, as the Class of 2020 graduates into a world transformed. The iconic 1903 bronze statue sent her students off with a simple message: “Be Well.”
Nearby statues of “Alma’s friend’s” were also decorated with signage in support of an accessible vaccine. These images were created and then distributed to a variety of media outlets.
We also created a how-to video to encourage other folks to don friendly statues with masks of support in their locations.
We pulled together all of our different strengths as a Lab, and got good public response to the in person intervention. We also created some fantastic images that have bolstered our reaching out to folks connected with Columbia and our digital presence in general.
We staged the scene to draw attention to a growing global campaign demanding open licensing arrangements for COVID-19 research and development efforts at universities worldwide. Such arrangements would help to ensure access to life-saving innovations developed with tax-payer funds. Columbia, located in the epicenter of the global pandemic, is one of the world’s foremost research institutions investigating vaccines and therapeutics to combat the virus.
A set of instructions exists on how to make this work
Original files can be provided for exhibition
The work can be reproduced on site with instructions (provided)
What was the process/journey of creating this work?
This project was the action that really cemented the relationship the Ligers share. We came together with different skills, backgrounds, and proximal locations to Columbia to make this project happen. It was fun, collaborative, and exciting!
What would be your next steps, building on this idea, if you had a million dollars and all the time and skills in the world?
We are talking about how to expand on this action in the fall! We would surround Alma Mater with a live counter of all those who have signed on with individual support in and around the Columbia community. This would take the form of some sort of giant mechanical object, or nightly projection-mapped interventions (all of course while Alma was wearing a mask).
We wanted to create images that would catch attention on social media- a little bit weird so people would feel inclined to interact with the images and learn more.
The Project:
My dog and I ran the shape of a vaccine. It was harder than we’d thought it would be.
I spoke with people along my route and afterwards through social media- they seemed skeptical, a little tickled, and curious to learn what would compel a person to do such a foolish thing.
What would be your next steps, building on this idea, if you had a million dollars and all the time and skills in the world?
I would make this go viral, have everyone out there running/walking vaccines (double good because it spreads awareness and gets people out exercising).
Solidarivir was a a tatic that integrates the strategy planned by students in Brazil to invite the top #1 university that requests biotech patents in the country. Inside it’s box, a letter to UFMG was delivered. The idea was to symbolize that more than 350 people within UFMG’s community were offering the university an opportunity to unlock its solidarity – the first line treatment for a pandemic.
The Project:
A box that was covered with paper and painted to resemble a generic drug package according to Brazilian specifications. Solidarivir is the name of the drug. The dosage is 19mg. Where we would see “oral use” on an official generic package, we see “uso colaborativo” – which means “collaborative use”. Where we would see “generic drug”, we see “acesso garantido”, which means “access guaranteed”. Where we would see the name of the manufacturer, we see “UFMG” – the name of the university solidarivir was given to as an invitation. We can see solidarivir is locked with a padlock made of paper and glitter. In order to open solidarivir’s box, you need to damage the padlock. Solidarivir comes with a big key made of paper, where you can see “UFMG” and 350 signatures. These signatures represent more than 350 people who signed a letter to UFMG inviting the university to sign the share its knowledge widely to end the pandemic. The letter was delivered inside solidarivir’s box.
Solidarivir’s simbology was really interesting. Its pictures helped us publishing a text about the initiative in the local news. It was also published in Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil to illustrate a text about the role of public universities in ending the pandemic.
The objective was to create an image that convinced people at Indiana University that they should sign the Open COVID Pledge. We wanted to use the university’s language and actions to show them that they were already doing things that aligned with the ideas behind the OCP.
The Project:
This is a digital image that highlights how signing the Open COVID Pledge aligns with Indiana University’s values and activities. We emailed it to university leaders.
We did a lot of background research for this graphic. The first box filled with scattered words surrounding “IU Stands For” are words that come directly from IU’s missions, values, and goals statement. We wanted to show the university that if these are your goals then you should support the OCP. Additionally, “#IN this together” and “Fulfill the Promise” are both phrases/language that IU uses frequently. We then looked into what the university was already doing to support open access. As the graphic shows, we found that IU was using open access 3D printing designs to print PPE to fight the pandemic, an IU professor created an open access origami mask, and the university had created an open access database to track COVID information.
We’ve shared some of our drafts as well as the final image.
Original files can be provided for exhibition
Reflections from Emilie Seibert
What was the process/journey of creating this work?
I included some additional images of earlier drafts. The idea for this came in a group brainstorming session, we mostly wanted to find a way to use what IU was already doing to show them they can take the next step and sign the OCP. Emilie created the very colorful original design. The group then had another meeting where we refined the image. Laura made the drawings.
To use the filter to generate awareness about Free the Vaccine and its aims. Also, to run this filter in Zoom meetings using SnapCamera (https://snapcamera.snapchat.com/) so that people would ask about the image connected to my head. This sparked many conversations about Free the Vaccine!.
The Project:
This is a Snapchat filter I created that sports the Free the Vaccine Logo as a face-tracking headband.
What was the process/journey of creating this work?
It was exciting to use my new media art skills to adapt an activism strategy that evolved from the situation created by the pandemic (i.e. living on Zoom).
What would be your next steps, building on this idea, if you had a million dollars and all the time and skills in the world?
I would make more filters, create them in all different languages, and publish them across a wider variety of platforms.
If someone else were going to make/use/do something like this, what advice would you give them?
This type of internet/new media work is easier to get into than one might think! Give it a try!
To get front line workers that work to save the lives of COVID-19 patients to show their support.
The Project:
A team of respiratory therapists from the hospital that recorded the first COVID-19 death in the United States, EvergreenHealth Medical Center, outside of Seattle, WA, took pictures holding signs calling for a free vaccine.
What was the process/journey of creating this work?
While thinking about ways to create images of people showing their support of the Free the Vaccine campaign, a respiratory therapist friend (the people who put critical patients on respirators) told me about his recent short stories reflecting on the experience of working at the first hospital overwhelmed with COVID-19 hospitalizations and with the first recorded COVID-19 death in the United States. I later reached out to him to see if he and his colleagues would do a photoshoot and they were happy to help.
