memory and narrative 3

A few weeks ago I showed you this and promised to explain it. So what is it now, exactly? Well, obviously it's a computer covered with blog posts. Ya wanna make something of it?

This installation project did require some planning. First of all, did you know that everyone and his dog has a basement full of castoff computer components? Who knew. Our landfills are thanking us for being lazy packrats. When I sent out an email to local contacts asking for computer parts I got a veritable flurry of responses.

After priming my 'canvas' I printed up a bunch of blog posts from the past six months, coated them with acrylic medium, then adhered them to the pc when they were dry (I love acrylic medium).

Now the obvious question: why did I do it? Well, the group component of the Memory and Narrative exhibition (see yesterday) is a book-altering project each, decided on because of the important role books play in recording personal histories and family stories. The other artists have done some fascinating work, from creating sculpture from books to scrapbook-style records of family histories. I was totally stuck for an idea. Then it occurred to me that since I was focusing on the past for my paintings, why not look to the future for my book project? And who better to bridge that gap than a compulsive blogger?

Memory and Narrative: Journals (the future)

installation

Books have played what is probably the most powerful role of all in preserving, constructing and packaging the stories of our lives. Family genealogies, photo albums, scrapbooks, memoirs and journals are documents of great personal significance in recording our memories. But what about the future? Increasingly this sort of record-keeping is gravitating from the physical world of book-making to the virtual world of personal websites, digital photograph collections and on-line journals or blogs (weblogs). This installation or sculpture is a symbolic bridge between the two worlds: I have created a physical representation of my own virtual record-making activities (i.e. hard copies of blog entries) and adhered them to the surface of the ‘container’ of the future, i.e. computer hardware, instead of the containers of the past, i.e. books.

I have no idea how something like this will be received, and haven't yet seen it in the gallery, but I had a lot of fun creating it.

More from Memory and Narrative here.