Alexa Meade has been invited to judge Wikipedia’s ‘The Heart of Knowledge Contest’. This contest – sponsored by the Wikimedia foundation – wants to illustrate the expansive role of knowledge in human life and why knowledge matters.
The Heart of Knowledge Contest
From the Wikimedia Foundation website: “From time immemorial, human beings have obsessed over knowledge. It’s one of our most precious resources, and our most jealously guarded. We’ve accumulated it gathering in circles under trees and squeaky chairs in sloped lecture halls, distributed it in etchings on stone tablets and inky letters on paper pages, even sought to hide it by blindfolding interlopers and erecting paywalls out of code.
Today, the gates that keep knowledge in the hands of the few are coming down. As a global society, we are more literate, cooperative, and connected than ever before. By reading this right now, you are doing more than your early ancestors could have fathomed.
How has that access to knowledge shaped your life?
Who would you be without what you know?
Is the right to seek knowledge freely currently protected where you live?
What might a future with complete access to the sum of the world’s knowledge look like?
What forms of knowledge are most important to you—and does your society recognize and value them? …”
The Wikimedia Foundation wants to illustrate the expansive role of knowledge in human life. The contests ask for creative submissions on the theme of what open access to knowledge means. Work is being accepted in five categories: short films, visual art (including illustrations, photography, 3D renderings, etc.), poetry, short fiction, and creative essays. The deadline to submit is 11:59pm on 30 April 2019.
For more information go to the contest website.
In June, a top submission in each category, will be determined by a panel of judges – including Alexa Meade – and a prize worth up to $350 will be awarded.
The Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and our other free knowledge projects. We want to make it easier for everyone to share what they know. To do this, we keep Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites fast, reliable, and available to all. We protect the values and policies that allow free knowledge to thrive. We build new features and tools to make it easy to read, edit, and share from the Wikimedia sites. Above all, we support the communities of volunteers around the world who edit, improve, and add knowledge across Wikimedia projects.
Alexa Meade
Alexa Meade is a mixed media artist best known for her portraits painted on the human body and set against painted backgrounds, that turn real life people into seemingly 2D works of art.
She takes a classical concept — trompe l’oeil, the art of making a two-dimensional representation look three-dimensional—and works in an opposite direction. Her aim is to do the opposite, to collapse depth and make her living models into flat pictures. The result is walking, talking optical illusions, 3D paintings that confuse how the eye processes objects in space.
In corporate settings her work can be customized to incorporate attendees, who have opportunities to photograph themselves within the artwork, and post them for colleagues and friends through social media outlets. Within the art world, Alexa’s art has been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London, The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in DC, Postmasters Gallery in NYC, and Galerie Ivo Kamm in Zurich, Galerie Ingo Seufert in Germany, and Galerie Edouard Mazel in Brussels. Alexa has delivered keynote speeches about her work at the Wired Conference, National Geographic, and TEDGlobal.
Alexa’s work is being written into art history textbooks around the world. She has given lectures at the California Institute of the Arts, UC-Berkeley, National Geographic London, WIRED, and the TED Global Conference. Her TED talk “Your Body is my Canvas,” has been viewed millions of times. She worked with space-time researchers at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and has also painted portraits of many individuals of note, including triple Grammy Award winner Gotye. Alexa’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Today Show, Nippon TV, BBC, Guardian, and hundreds of other media outlets around the world.
Alexa has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. The short film Color of Reality was granted the “Art as Impact Award” by CNN and was included in the National Civil Rights Museum’s “Freedom Awards Ceremony.” Alexa was honored with the “Disruptive Innovation Award” by The Tribeca Film Festival. She accepted an invitation to the White House under President Barack Obama and she has twice achieved the coveted #1 spot on Reddit.com, “The Frontpage of the Internet.”
Alexa Meade is available for corporate, private and non-ticketed events.