In an age where news travels instantly via the Internet and text messages, the Broadthinking Curatorial Project of New York City and The Arts at Marks Garage in Honolulu challenged artists around the world to slow it down and present news the old-fashioned way: using scrolls and snail mail.

The result is "Slow News International," a collection of "big picture" news reports from around the world as interpreted by artists in Tokyo; Hong Kong; London; Berlin; New York; Albuquerque, N.M.; Minneapolis; Washington, D.C.; and other areas.

The rules were simple: The artists were asked to report on news and issues important to their communities, using 3-foot-wide scrolls that could be sent in standard mailing tubes.

Aside from being asked to make sure their news reports would be still current when the show opened in September, artists had no other restrictions and were free to use text, photographs, paintings, digital and other media.

As a whole, the exhibit stands as an antithesis to instant messaging, as well as a way to offer a different perspective of print news using an ancient medium at a time when newspapers and magazines are struggling to survive.

The international exhibit also combats today's economic reality and Hawai'i's geographic isolation with an affordable way to import art from several far-flung locales, offering a diversity usually too cost-prohibitive for Honolulu's small galleries.