Yesterday gave birth to a new name and a new place with new ideas and new beginnings. And it was done collaboratively. Everyone was asked to bring in ten names to discuss. Some came with six, others with one that they supported to the bitter end. There were some new faces that did not come nameless and one person brought sentences.
All the names, most of them quite good, with one or two really bad ones were written on a piece of paper on the wall for all to discuss. For the first round, everyone voted to keep a name in for further discussion. After that round, we got it down to 27 then 18 and finally 5. After a delicious lunch break, we returned with full stomachs and fresh minds to pick The Name out of the final five.
The finalists were BAM (Bishkek Art Machine or Matrix) “B” being in Cyrillic, B’Art, Banan, ARTerium, and Bishart.
It was determined the Bishart was too generic and not as exciting as the others. Banan, which means banana, was too overused as a pop symbol and the older artists in the complex would see the name as a joke. ARTerium met the same fate as Bishart and the name conjured up images of blood, and medicine. BAM, one of my favorites, was the name of a large rail construction project that happened many years ago but remained in the minds of people today. Though it was not necessarily a negative project it’s the first thing that came to mind. B’Art remained. Though the majority of the participants liked it, Shaarbek was concerned that is was too localized to just Bishkek – the name had to be international. We convinced him, I think, that it was indeed international and fresh with immense advertising and promotional opportunities. In the end, al was happy with the process and the name, in the next few days we’ll be developing a logo and begin on the second public art component of this project.
1 comment:
Interesting to know.
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