Thursday, June 16, 2011

Autohomography {I lived here series}


What is HOME?
Is it where you live, where you are from, is it inside you or defined by external
conditions? And is it private? What level of privacy can you expect?

I have been considering these questions recently.
This project began with a Facebook experiment.

A friends status read “Pay It Forward for Creative People: I promise to send something handmade to the first 5 people who leave a comment to this update. They must in turn, promise to post this and send something they made to the first 5 posters on their status. The rules are that it must be handmade by you and it must be sent to your 5 people sometime in 2010.”

I replied and posted. As my list of respondents was built, I questioned what to create for them. The spectrum of relationships with these “friends” varied tremendously and my intention was to make something unique and personal for each. But how? As their addresses for mailing purposes came into my message box, I typed them in to google to research the areas I had not been. I clicked on Street View for each address discovering that I could see their homes without having been there and I drew from that invasion of their privacy using this publicly accessible reference. Each recipient is receiving a package with a drawing of my house and their house.

My home sent to theirs.

This inspired me to investigate my own home autobiography via google.
I set up rules for the project. Only images available to the general public through google maps or google images and only minimal memory could be used for reference. I did not allow myself the use of family photos. If you look up these addresses you will find that which is illustrated here.

This series is the result of 10 “homes” in chronological order, the project is on going with an additional 3 homes in progress.

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