professional practice journal

project iii

the entire group met up on the 12. of february in new cross.
the group is:

uel

1 - Mattias

2 - Ali

3 - Joseph Pleass

4 - Sumayyah

5 - Phillipa

chelsea

1 - Joe Myers

2 - Joe Mania

3 - Jessie

4 - Danny

5 - Steven

this is also the swapping list. first swap 1-1, next, 1-2, 2-3 and so on.

the word i got for a start is AMERICA.
this is the text i accompanied with the work:

The idea for the project was inspired by a soviet children’s book I once found, entitled ’There is no America’. The book was published in the 1970’s and is meant for elementary school. It’s basically a short story that often states (as it claims in the title) that America doesn’t exist – asking the children: have you been there to say indefinately that it does? The soviet kids obviously hadn’t and couldn’t.
When you think about it America really doesn’t exist. Atleast not anymore, if it ever did – and definately not in a freedom-for-all way the country is portrayed. In a way it’s a hoax, an enterprise - especially in the light of Wikileaks exposures and overall degradation of capitalistic values in the years of the depression. The american dreamer is obese, not Marlon Brando.
The other side of the work – the part I’m more interested in – is the whole idea of (purposeful or accidental) misdirection and being lost. I like the idea of deliberately altered, faulty to begin with or incomplete maps (when Columbus ’discovered’ America he actually thought he was in India, so by his map, there was no America inbetween). Also the fact that Americans are generally very poor in geography because of their ignorance towards what lay outside of America (I’ve encountered people who thought Europe was a country) – so in a way their world map is limited to America, whilst I present the absence of.
Generally what I would like to achieve with this is at first glance a standard map, but with a major subtraction – to question peoples knowledge and attention span.
The final piece would be printed as a large map and folded, or I’m also exploring the idea of making a globe.

the first swap was a bit complicated, because joe (pleass) lost the swapping list and because he, ali and philippa are in america with tim, there was a bit of a confusion about who was swapping with who. it has been sorted out now and most people have done the swap - although a bit later than intended.

to try and avoid future confusion, i created a facebook group to keep everyone up to date and avoid confusing emails that might not get sent to everyone.

i received my first project to respond to from joe myers and his word to start with was DIALOGUE. it's a text piece describing a conversation he had with a man on the bus. i'm not yet sure how i want to approach this piece, but my preliminary idea is inspired by the font he used - it's a generuc 70's style font. and the 70's always remind me of slap bass, and discoish music made by mufftops. so i'm thinking of making an interactive machine (maybe based on ableton or such) that will able the user to create their own generic 70's music. the idea may change radically, because i'm not entirely sure how to create the machine. we'll see.