Project 3
Yet again this project was a tad bit difficult for me to fully realize as it was last year. There is something about the prompt that just befuddles my mind. After spending a great deal of time looking at all of the references from the syllabus for this class I couldn’t help but continuously going back to The Walking Project. There is something about it that just fascinates me. I decided that this project would be the inspiration for my own—but how would I make it different and how would I adapt it to my limitations?
I decided to use the similar tactic of tracking my location via a gps tracking device in my Blackberry. This allows for people to log into an account online and view my location and my movements. My first limitation with this idea arrived with the inability to find enough people to participate or even one person to run a sort of monitoring booth—but I worked with what I could get.
After I worked out the method in which I would conduct this project I had to think about what I was going to do exactly and for what reason. I kept thinking about the place that I am in: Tucson, Arizona. Most people who aren’t from around here seem to highly dislike this place. It is conceived as the bottom of the barrel and a generally undesirable place. I decided to show that Arizona is not such a bad place and that there are some people out there in the world who actually do enjoy living here.
However, is it possible that if someone directs us from a separate location we can see things in a new light? If our own judgments are removed from our will and if we are at the will of another individual could our minds be changed? Can we as humans let go of our preconceived notions about something? I chose to experiment with this idea with my mother, who has recently moved away to California after living here in Arizona for 19 years. She misses Arizona terribly and still hasn’t adjusted to her new location; although she was born and raised in California. This just shows you that not everyone hates Arizona or Tucson for that matter.
I instructed my mom to log in to an account so that she could monitor my moves via my Blackberry. I really gave her no specific instructions but rather I just told her to direct me around the area, telling me where to go and when to take a picture. I also told her that if she saw fit she could tell me to find something specific to take a picture of whether it be an object, a place, a color—pretty much anything she wanted. I told her to email me my instructions and I would follow along as she guided me through my path.
I let her guide me around for a good hour and a half—until I had almost no light left. It was an interesting feeling to wander around aimlessly. Usually when I go out on these types of walks I have a purpose in mind. However this time I was in someone else’s hands with their purpose in mind—in their mind anyway.
The following images are those that I took on my journey. I have included some of the maps being created by my paths as well. I discovered that it may be possible to let go of your own ideas and follow those of someone else. I think that this project was a great experiment with this whole idea but I would love to do something like it again with people I don’t know controlling me. I think that the bond I have with my mother may inhibit the outcome more than it would with strangers. Overall I think that this journey and this process opened my eyes to an unlimited source of mapping techniques. Moreover, I hope that people who view this realize that there is beauty in seemingly dull places, you just have to allow someone else show you how to look for it.
Project 2
I absolutely could not wait to do this project—again. The last time I worked on this idea inspired by Style Wars, I played it safe and afterwards wished I hadn’t. I was afraid of legality issues and did not push myself enough to come up with a creative means to make a tag of my social scene. This time around I feel I was much more successful; however, I still struggle with how to capture the scene in an effective way.
In a few months I plan to go to culinary school and therefore I am borderline obsessed with everything culinary. More specifically, I want to pursue the path of pastry making—after all, I have pretty much the biggest sweet tooth humanly possible. I decided that this would be the avenue of my social investigation. After watching Style Wars I was strangely uplifted. There was just something inspiring about the graffiti bombers that was oddly positive and hopeful. On top of that I was looking at Lisa’s blog and reading about Optimist and starting thinking about a positive message I could leave the public. It was this thought process along with my passion for sweets that helped me discover my personal tag: “Eat Dessert First”. You know the whole saying…life is uncertain, eat dessert first. And of course, what better medium to use to make my tag but FROSTING!
Although frosting is not permanent I’m sure it would have been frowned upon by anyone with authority. So I made my venture to tag this uplifting, sweet phrase in the middle of the night—although I was shocked at how many people there were around everywhere I went. It made me very nervous. At first I was placing my tag in random spots, wherever there didn’t appear to be anyone around. Then I decided to be a little bit more daring and tag in front of locations associated with food or eating. I left my mark on sidewalks leading up to restaurants, benches and tables of patio eating areas, and even on rocks underneath a sign for a restaurant. Although, I found it very difficult to document both my tag and the area in an effective way. Since I was nervous and I obviously had to use a flash to get any sort of image I wanted to just snap a picture and quickly walk away before anyone noticed me. I only had one somewhat nerve-wracking incident (although it happened to be the very first tag I did so I was freaked out for the rest of the night). After I made the first tag a man nearby noticed me and started coming towards me after I stood up—I booked it out of there. I went back much later to see if I could still take a picture of my tag and I noticed that whoever it was had stepped on it, which was kind of interesting.
Overall, I hope that my little message will make anyone who sees it smile a little—and even better, eat dessert first!
Final Project
For my final project I decided to use a combination of ideas and tactics used from this class. I would say that this project is a mixture of a walking exercise and a tagging experiment. I also took inspiration from the prompt for the third project in a way that I was causing a subtle disruption in specific places to awaken the public.
I chose to touch on the subject of our environment. As I was researching ideas for this project I learned that America is rated number one as top global warming polluter in the world. Additionally there has been a 20% increase in America’s carbon dioxide emissions. I got all of my statistics from www.edf.org which is the Environmental Defense Fund. On this same website I noticed a link that said “calculate your pollution” and out of curiosity I clicked. I figured it would be some phony website but much to my surprise it was part of the same site. I answered some simple questions about what kind of building I lived in, what kind of car I drive, how often I drive and how often I fly during the year. I learned that I create 4.2 metric tons of carbon. Although I know this was just an estimate the comparison it gave me of my emissions being the same as cutting and burning all the trees in an area of the Amazon the size of half of a football field. I thought this was really interesting. I was also pleased to see that I was far under the average American who creates an astonishing 9.44 tons of carbon.
There were several suggestions given to help cut back pollution such as energy efficient light bulbs and cutting car pollution. I found out that if you have to drive you should lighten the load in your car (which is something I can do—my car is a mess and probably has 30 extra pounds of weight at least), refrain from idling and driving the speed limit. However the thing that the website pushed the most was to not use your car. Walking or riding a bike can reduce pollution, save gas and you money. (On top of that it gives you exercise)
And thus my idea came alive. I wanted to thank those who are taking action against pollution and choosing to walk or ride their bike. I made several little envelopes that had “Thank you for walking. A gift for you inside.” written on them. Inside was a single penny. I know it’s not much but has anyone ever paid you for walking? It’s not very common. (and as my mother always taught me—every penny counts) My biggest question at this point was how was I going to target pedestrians? And then it hit me. Crosswalks!! So off I set, walking around town placing one of these little thank you notes on every pedestrian crossings—just above the button so they couldn’t miss it.
I know a penny isn’t much—but I am hoping that it will inspire people to continue walking to help preserve our home—planet earth.
I have included photos and map that is marked with red stars of all of the intersections I walked through and placed these “thank you” notes. And for some reason the map comes out teenie tiny on the link but you can still click it so it will take you to a larger version. Sorry– I don’t know how to fix it.
Project 3
I have to say that even though this project took me FOREVER to come up with a good idea—it is right up my alley. I chose a few different tactics all rolled into to one to portray my thoughts and ideas. In a way I think that this stems off of last weeks project because I would say I tagged myself with a face paint pen (except for my arms and my back I needed help with those ones). Then I utilized my favorite type of photography—self-portrait (hey, I know can seem conceded or whatever but being both the model and the photographer is A LOT of hard work especially when you only have a self timer of ten seconds to work with). And then I topped everything off by taking photographs of my photographs within a place.
As I said—this week’s project seemed almost impossible for me. I honestly didn’t think I was going to get it done. I started with one idea that unfortunately I just couldn’t really get into. I probably wasn’t passionate enough about it. So I gave up on that one half way through and just started writing and researching until all of a sudden I knew what I was going to do. It seriously just smacked me in the face and said “HEY! DO THIS!!!!” And that “this” was the topic of domestic violence.
This is a very personal issue for me and is one of my “soap box” topics. And I don’t mean personal as in I am or ever have been a victim of domestic violence; however, I have had close friends and family members suffer from it. I must preface my work with the idea that I am NOT being a feminist by any means. However, since the prompt entailed using your own body and I am female that is how I narrowed down such a broad topic of domestic violence. Hence, I used my female body as a means of departure for this assignment.
In fact, in my personal opinion I think that men are just as much at risk for being subjected to domestic violence as women. And even though the numbers for women are always higher I am a firm believer that men are even less likely than women to report cases of domestic violence against them and that is why these numbers between men and women are unequal. However, the one unfortunate thing (and I mention this in my images) is that domestic violence usually has a greater toll on women because they are much easily injured that men. And unfortunately the difference between a man not knowing his own strength against a woman and vice versa is catastrophic.
So in these images I tagged myself with statistics about domestic violence. I photographed myself in a way that it was clear that the person in the images is female but it could be any female. I then proceeded to make captions of what was written on my body to put below the photographs so that they could clearly be read.
I chose to place these photographs in locations that I knew they would be seen. There is a certain path down 1st avenue that I constantly see people walking on. I wanted to target pedestrians (especially those who are walking) because they are going slow enough to be able to see these images. Basically I just want to educate anyone who is willing to take a moment to stop and look. I know it won’t solve domestic violence but if I can educate even one person about this topic that I have made a difference—no matter how small.
The order of the photographs below is the self-portrait and then it’s location in place. The quotes are in order as they appear below.
“Women victimized by emotional abuse often suffer from depression–increasing risk for suicide.”
“Only 1/3 of cases of domestic violence are actually reported in the U.S. and U.K.”
“Sexual abuse CAN happen between married couples.”
“In the U.S. women are 6 times as likely as men to experience domestic violence. This violence is more damaging as women are more likely to be injured than men.”
“One in 4 women in the U.S. will be a victim of domestic violence during her lifetime.”
Project 2
Overall this week’s projects have quite difficult for me as I had difficulty coming up with ideas for this theme. However once one idea happened another automatically fell into place—so I was a bit out of order this week.
For this week’s project “Inside/Outside the Scene” I chose to use the film Style Wars as my inspiration. I have always enjoyed graffiti and wished I could make my own graffiti. But I must admit I am too chicken to actually do it. So therefore this project seemed like the next best thing for now—however, it is on my list of things to do before I die. I utilized the idea of making my own temporary tag. I still wanted it to really have that graffiti style to it so I chose to use acrylic paint on a large surface so the colors would be very bright and I so I could really control my tools.
During my investigation about graffiti and its culture I read about the very large connection to the gamer world. This made perfect sense as I have seen many of these links. So therefore, my social scene in this investigation is the gamer world. As a gamer myself, the site of investigation is Gamestop—where else would I go to stay connected and up to date in the gamer scene? The tag itself incorporates my own identify through the use of my gamer tag. I also mention my system of choice by including an Xbox 360 game controller. And for anyone who is also a gamer on Xbox Live—feel free to add me (just let me know who you are so I’ll accept you).
Project 1
For this weeks project I was assigned an ephemeral/site project. It was surrounded by the ideas of Andy Goldsworthy’s work. Seeing as I am in Tucson, Arizona for now and have been in Arizona for the majority of my life, I found it appropriate to select a desert location. When I was walking around one day I found this little gorge/wash type thing that was wedged in between different building developments. I suppose you could say it’s an Arizona alleyway. When I finally made it down the steep slope into the gorge I noticed how much trash there was down there. Something of particular interest to me was this weird metal box that was open on one end and had little holes all over one side.
I circled the box and wondered how long it had been there. It didn’t really have any rust or anything on it so it can’t have been too long. However I decided that this would be my point of interest for this project. It reminded me of some wild animals shelter—or better yet, home. And I decided that even if it wasn’t being used for such a purpose that I should make it look more inviting and just maybe it’d be used for one. So I began to gather dead and dried branches from the area and measured them up to the box and started breaking them down to the right size.
After a little while a woman in the house at the top of the gorge became interested in what I was doing. I already was worried I was going to get yelled at for being there. She seemed irritated at first and wanted to know what I was doing. She apparently thought I was dumping trash there because it wound up that that box was an air conditioning cover that had fallen off the house next door a few days ago when workers were working on it. She told me that they knocked it down and just left it there. She seemed very mad about it. But she was okay with me being down there as long as I wasn’t dumping trash. I did tell her what I was doing and she looked at me like I was crazy. She asked me to pick up the plastic bag that was lying on the ground and said that of course I would and I thanked her.
I covered the box with the sticks and carried over these dried flower blossoms by the handful and put them inside of the box to serve as a cushion for the bottom of the inside of the box. As the sun was setting I finished my piece. I was dirty and had cactus thorns in my hands and shirt. But, my work was not done I had to quickly take photographs before it was too dark and before I possibly had an encounter with some form of wildlife. I assume that the woman who owns the house will call the company of the workers who were there to make them come and pick up the box. So I don’t really know how long it will stay there. If they never come to get it, I’m sure that the weather will knock the sticks down and blow the flowers away. Maybe I will check on it every other day to see what’s happening to it.
