democracy which seeks to resolve disagreements in a blind drive for consensus.» [5] What are the new tools and methodologies for both enabling and mapping such debates?

Parallel to debates about the public, artists have been challenging consensual notions about art as well. As Allan Kaprow put it: «The Japanese Gutai, Environments, Happenings, Noveau Realisme, Fluxus, events, noise music, chance poetry, life theater, found actions, bodyworks, earthworks, concept art, information art—the list could go on—confronted publics and arts professionals with strange occurrences bearing little resemblance to the known arts.» [6] From Umberto Eco’s theories of the open work [7] to Joseph Beuys’ influential formulation of social sculpture as «an art that ‘releases energy in people, leading them to a general discussion of actual problems’ and which «would mean the cultivation of relations between men, almost an act of life,» [8] there has been over half a century of practice and theory expanding art into the everyday realms of public life.

In part this has been an attempt by artists to expand their public, as Dieter Daniels writes: «The use

of new technologies like film and radio, which are potential mass media, is associated with the hope that the avant-garde can be released from its self-imposed isolation so that ‹art and the people can be reconciled with each other,› as Guillaume Apollinaire put it in 1912.» [9] In part, however, it is recognition of the need for public discourse to create a public at all—and hence a public sphere. As Patricia Phillips writes: «A growing number of artists and agencies believe that the responsibility of public artists and agencies is not to create permanent objects for presentation in traditionally accepted public places but, instead, to assist in the construction of a public—to encourage through actions, ideas, and interventions, a participatory audience where none seemed to exist.» [10] As Phillips states, part of the creation of an audience is through the participation of the audience. This has often meant «community art» such as the murals created by Judy Baca with community participation or projects by Tim Rollins and K.O.S. [11] Increasingly, artists such as the collectives Superflex [12] and PDPal are creating platforms (webcasting and mapping) for local audiences to utilize without getting