Guggenheim picks shortlisted films for YouTube art exhibition

A total of 125 videos have been shortlisted by New York's Guggenheim Museum for YouTube's first "YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video."

The shortlisted videos were selected from more than 23,000 "YouTube Play" submissions hailing from 91 countries around the globe.

"It's now down to the YouTube Play jury to pick up to 20 videos for a special presentation at the Guggenheim Museum on October 21," announced Google on September 19.  

The competition was launched to both inspire the creation of new video works and to showcase the far-ranging possibilities of a screen-based exhibition.

While many submissions have been created by leading artists and online video experts, there have also been outstanding submissions from students, composers, comedy groups, rock bands and video game programmers says Google.

In the coming weeks the star-studded jury (which includes the likes of contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, artist Douglas Gordon and Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector) will select 20 films from the shortlist for a special presentation due to be held at the Guggenheim Museum on October 21.

The selected videos will then be available for public viewing at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, then the Guggenheim Museums in Bilbao, Berlin and Venice from October 22 to 24.  

Art lovers can also log on to Google's YouTube Play channel, http://www.youtube.com/play, to watch the shortlisted films.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/125-video-shortlist-announced-today-for.html