14 DAY TRIAL // At the start of the summer, YouTube and the Guggenheim revealed an initiative to have a number of YouTube videos showcased in a gallery in some of the Guggenheim museums around the world and in a dedicated YouTube channel as well.
The Guggenheim has gone through the tens of thousands of submissions and has selected 125 to make it to the short list.
Now, it's up to the panel of international judges to narrow that down to 20 which will be presented next month at the Guggenheim.
"The Guggenheim has spoken: the shortlist for YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video will now go in front of the jury, and is available to view at youtube.com/play," Tom Pursey, Product Marketing Manager at YouTube announced.
"More than 23,000 videos, from 91 countries, were submitted for YouTube Play, and the Guggenheim has picked 125 to make up the shortlist," he said.
"In there, you’ll find submissions from students, video artists, photographers, filmmakers, composers, video game programmers, an American Women’s Chess Champion, a comedy improv group, a Swedish rock band, a South African hip-hop group, an Australian electronic music producer – and a lot more," he explained.
The YouTube Play finalists will get their videos showcased on October 22 through October 24 at the first edition of the biennial. The works will be displayed in the Tower 2 Gallery of the Guggenheim Museum in New York as well as at the Guggenheim Museums in Bilbao, Berlin and Venice.
Of course, the videos, which will be announced on October 21, will be available on the YouTube Play channel as well, for the world to see.
YouTube is running a second big project which is somewhat similar to this one. The video site has partnered with Riddley Scott to create Life in a Day, a crowdsourced film which aims to depict the life of people around the world on July 24.