.... if you don't like it, wait an hour and it will change!
What a week for Antony Gormley and the Fourth Plinth: media attention, protestor controversy, artistic debate, and a stream of crowds gazing up as Plinthians do their thing. The 168 year-old Plinth has probably never had so much attention in its stony faced history.
One & Other has been everywhere this week, I have even heard of television reportage in Canada. Picking up national newspapers on Tuesday, I found major stories on the project. My favourite is an article by Charlotte Higgins on the front page of The Guardian, describing the initial British self portrait as "a mosaic of polite rule-breakers, exhibitionists with a social conscience and slightly inept publicans". The Independent had a double page spread profiling the first ten Plinthians and positing the question 'is it really art?'
Perhaps the funniest items were cartoons in The Sun and The Daily Mail, one showing a bedraggled Gordon Brown standing on the Plinth with a 'Vote Labour' placard, and the other showing a trench-coated elderly man flashing the Trafalgar Square crowd.
One columnist who bought a personal touch to critiquing the project was Times writer Libby Purves. She traversed through London on Tuesday at 3am "past ragged sleepers and a lone street cleaner and scavenging, squawking seagulls" to see her brother Morris dance on the plinth at 4am. "So was my brother a piece of art?" wrote Libby Purves, "Actually, I think so."
Comedian and Writer Frank Skinner was certainly impressed, writing in The Times yesterday "One & Other makes me proud to be British ... [it] is a fabulous symbol of freedom and free speech."

Aside from Journalists and Art Critics, there is another avid audience for One & Other: Twitter followers! As fellow-blogger Tina-Louise asked yesterday "Is Twitter-heckling Art too?"; Twitter has become a place for continual commentary of Plinthian activity - One & Other became so popular on Monday that it was in the top ten Twitter trends in the UK! I'm not surprised; this website received 70,000 hits on Monday (with 260 welcome hits filtering down to my blog!)
I have to admit, I have been tweeting a lot this week (@matt_tucker if you're interested), with my tweets on the project reaching triple figures! But it's all part of the idea that is One & Other - bringing New Media and Art together - reinforcing Gormley's intention of making the public the focus of the Art.
If you are of the Twitter persuasion, don't forget to follow @oneandother. You can also follow @Plinthwatch, which is curated by guardian.co.uk. The team behind @Plinthwatch have been tweeting day and night, providing insightful comments for insomniacs across the UK.
So now the project is well and truly underway, a question has been flying around; 'Is it Art?'. Divided opinions are already appearing in the media, some calling it "middle class big brother."
I don't like Big Brother, I viewed series one (way back in 2000) and concluded that watching people trying to scoop media deals was not entertainment. But, I wholeheartedly believe there is a place for 'reality viewing' in Art and Culture. Television shows have used our fascination with the format to their advantage; selecting people who provide shock-factor entertainment to boost ratings, giving the medium a very bad name. I hope One & Other will change that trend. Do you think it will?
With spirited debate on the both sides of the argument, it has already achieved what I hoped it would: discourse between people from all walks of life, not just Artists and Critics.
As the project progresses through the weeks I'm sure it will lead me to many conclusions on British Art, but for the moment, I love it; my plinth-cam addiction was confirmed on day one.
Whether you love it or hate it, One & Other is here to stay for the next 93 days. So treat it like an unwanted relation visiting in the spare room, hogging the bathroom in the morning, or welcome it like an old friend, one who is going to stand on a plinth for your consideration!
I leave you with a couple of Youtube videos, the first is a highlight of Mark Korczak's hour on the Plinth on Monday at 8pm, nicely edited to give you a sense of the pace of the first day:
The second video is of aspiring Plinthian Doug Blane practising his plinth party piece; he wants to do a Yoga vinyasa Urdhva Padmasana upside down lotus pose on the Fourth Plinth. The beautiful scenery behind is in Aurlandsfjord near Flåm, Norway.
I hope he can hold that position for a whole hour - he might need a pillow...
playwrite27
Nice post.