Mattress Factory

The “p(art)icipate: an active archive” project will use new applications of database software to capture, preserve, and share the creative ideas, processes, artistic products, and life narratives of the artists, staff, and 35-year history of the Mattress Factory. The result will be an interactive, multimedia online archive enriched by user-generated tagging and content that will create new relationships across the various forms of data, and engage the audiences in unexpected ways. The active archive will demystify the creative process, enable visitors to see the museum’s space transformed over time, show the evolution of a work in the process of its installation, and invite the user to contribute shared content to the database. As a result, participants will have a more personalized, interactive virtual visit that offers far more than a museum publication or Web site.