Other Sights for Artists’ Projects was pleased to produce Digital Natives, a public artwork sited on the electronic billboard at the Burrard Street Bridge between April 4 and April 30, 2011. Curators Lorna Brown and Clint Burnham invited artists and writers from across North America to contribute messages to be broadcast over the month of April, coinciding with the 125th Anniversary of the City of Vancouver. Curators: Lorna Brown, Clint Burnham Artwork Contributors: Candice Hopkins, cheyanne turions, Chris Bose, Christian Bök, Daina Warren, Edgar Heap of Birds, Emily Fedoruk, Henry Tsang, Larissa Lai, Lisa Robertson, Lori Emerson, Marianne Nicolson, Marie Annharte Baker, Mercedes Eng, Michael Turner, Peter Morin, Phillip Djwa, Postcommodity (Raven Chacon, Kade L. Twist, Steven Yazzie, Nathan Young), Rachel Zolf, Raymond Boijoly, Rita Wong, Roger Farr, Sonny Assu, Tania Willard.

Digital Natives intervened in the physical, social and historical context of the site, the billboard and the city with a series of ten-second text messages interrupting the rotation of advertisements. Taking the form of Twitter messages, invited contributors responded to the site’s charged history, the ten-second format and the 140-character limit of tweets. The contributed messages in English were selectively translated into Skwxwú7mesh; Kwak’wala and h?n’q’emin’?m’ and these, along with messages resulting from workshops with urban Aboriginal youth, completed the launch of the project. The billboard itself became an artistic and literary space for exchange between native and non-native communities exploring how language is used in advertising, its tactical role in colonization, and as a complex vehicle of communication. Encouraging dialogue among artists and writers, between First Nations and non-First Nations communities, and between artists, writers and the public, Digital Natives is public art that the public not only ‘receives’, but also produced. Local and remote audiences were welcomed to tweet their messages to @diginativ, and they were considered for broadcast. Contributor messages were formatted in blue text on a red background: public tweets displayed as red text on a blue background.