The Mobile Arts Lab II is part of an ongoing project that converts shipping containers into 'mobile arts labs', takes those labs to schools and community centers within the city of Santa Barbara to provide arts experiences for underserved youth, and employs professional artists in residence at each site. The project builds on the success of the first mobile arts lab – The Tamayo Mobile – this time undertaking the theme: mobile media/mobile environments. Upon completion the lab will visit at least the following five (5) sites: Franklin Community Center, Harding School, Santa Barbara Teen Center, Casa de la Raza, and the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Barbara, in addition to an ongoing display site at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art .

UPDATE: REGRETS @ CASA DE LA RAZA IS ONLINE HERE!

BACKGROUND
            The unexpected success of The Tamayo Mobile specifically, and the 'mobile arts lab' idea in general, has pointed out a very real need in the Santa Barbara community: the need for access to the arts. The mobile arts labs provide a space for work to be seen (many children have no access to the arts), artwork to be made (many schools have no official arts instruction or even classrooms), and also provide a unique arts experience (most schools have no formally trained artists on staff). As Alma Robinson, executive director of California Lawyers for the Arts points out: Since funding for sequential arts training has virtually disappeared from California public school system since Prop 13 passed in 1978, a generation has grown up without arts in the schools. At one time, the California Arts Council expanded its programs to try and fill this gap: currently the Arts Council has been almost totally de-funded. As a result, there is little- to no funding for community arts projects, arts in schools or for at-risk teen programs, all of which means that our emerging artists, [the young people of Santa Barbara], have fewer opportunities to find their footing and life-sustaining work in fields that may change the course of their lives.
       The board of The Container Project has already entered into conversations with local artists Laurel Beckman, Graham Budgett, Billy Hood, Jane Mulfinger, and Cristina Venegas (Latino Cinemedia), each of whom have agreed to participate in the project in some way – from creating content for the container to producing interactive work (mobile media) to travel within the mobile environment, to serving as artist in residence at one or more of the sites. Billy Hood and Jane Mulfinger will be the primary partners in the project along with Graham Budgett, Mark-David Hosale, and August Black.

Funding for this project has been provided by a generous grant from the City of Santa Barbara Community Arts Grant Program, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the UC Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA) and the UC Santa Barbara Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and J Staal Storage Solutions. The funding will pay for the following:
- rebuilding of the pull out unit that anchors the exhibition space of the container
- creation of a 'screening room' within the container
- purchase of disposable digital cameras and disposable digital recorders 
- reconceptualization of Jane Mulfinger and Graham Budgett's REGRETS project for the mobile space of the container and creation/installation of the new work
- payment to artists to create the work
- payment to artists to serve as artist-in-residence at each of the project sites

The goal for future fund -raising activities is to establish an ongoing partnership with the Santa Barbara Unified School District, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, UCIRA and various donors to make the mobile arts lab a permanent fixture of the Santa Barbara arts education scene.

Artists in residence are an integral part of the process. The artists will spend approximately 4 days at each location working with teachers and students on projects tying the box directly to the curriculum, with a focus on the California arts standards.

THE ARTISTS
Billy Hood: Billy Hood has been involved with the project since its inception – first as leader on the team of UCSB students who worked on the Open Container affordable housing project, and then as a participating artist for the SBMA show Labor Exchange: How Much for a Buck? For that show, Hood not only undertook one of the $100 commissions but also designed and crafted a pull out unit that anchors the exhibition space of the container – extending the useful space past the four steel walls, and also serving multiple functions – from mobile drawing station, to base for a micro-cinema screening area (see attached images). This unit has stayed in the container throughout its life as The Tamayo Mobile, serving as a retractable exhibition wall and base for display of 3-D images. In addition to working as a master artist on this project, Billy will also revamp the unit, which has taken a beating as the container has moved from space to space and been utilized by several thousand school-aged kids. Hood will graduate with an MFA in Art from UCSB in June and has agreed to stay on with the project for the duration of the grant period.

Jane Mulfinger. After receiving a BA with Honors from Stanford University in 1983, Mulfinger lived in Berlin and London, completing an MFA with distinction from the Royal College of Art in 1989. She is now based in California. Her most recent work with her partner Graham Budgett is an interactive media piece entitled REGRETS. A version of this work, geared specifically to the space of the container and the public it will reach, will form the basis her work on the mobile media/mobile environments project. Further information about REGRETS can be found at <http://regrets.org.uk/>. The next iteration of the project will be on view in Paris, Fr. in June of 2008 http://www.lesiteducube.com/site/index.php?section=festival_1ercontact
            A short summary of the work follows: the equipment for the project in its original incarnation consists of four custom-designed backpack input/display units used to carry computers to the public in a conceptually interesting way.  The units are wirelessly connected to a central database using a [GPRS] mobile-phone network.  There is also a kiosk/booth which is a central meeting point, the mother-ship, designed as a half cylinder on wheels that can be rolled straight out of a vehicle and maneuvered to a chosen site by a single attendant. It holds a computer with printer and provides both shelter and privacy for users. When first exhibited/performed, over a 10-day period in Cambridge, England, the mobile units roamed public space within the city to collect and then display anonymous regrets from the public to comprise a sociological database of time- & site-specific sentiment in the community. REGRETS Cambridge was an interactive archive, a public conceptual artwork, and a study of communally shared but typically private recollections. The intention of the piece is to position human regret  [especially remorseful regret] as a positive entity - to question the common assertion that we should have no regrets - and to see regret as a useful learning tool.  There is another logic at work here, one that celebrates introspection and thoughtfulness in the individual psyche at the same time that it publicizes it.  The project explores the complex interaction of memory and regret by creating an archive that stands as a metaphor for individual memory but also has the capacity of collective thought - the play of thoughts, the montage of themes,the juxtaposition of yours and mine. At the end of the performative interactive phase of this local work over 3,000 submissions had been collected, indicating a keen interest in finding common ground.
            Jane will work with her partner Graham Budgett, as well as with co-artist Billy Hood, to adapt the spirit and technology of REGRETS to the mobile media/mobile environments project, giving students the opportunity to participate in a local virtual arts community, but also the chance to develop their own work around questions that interest them. The nature of these questions is at this time, speculative, as it will be worked out by the artists in conjunction with the students. However, the idea of beginning the project from the starting point of human emotions (regret, love, happiness, etc.) is one that appeals to all involved as a way to productively get at the issues that matter most to our local teen population.