An afternoon chat with Gary and Matt.

After discovering my tutor Matt ran his own secret blog we began to discuss the power of social network sites and how free expression is becoming less possible. Being a teacher Matt feels the need to keep his blog anonymous, this way he can express his true feelings without worrying that this could later come back to haunt him. This made me realise that perhaps we should all be more careful when putting our names to sites. If someone wanted to find me online they wouldn’t have to look far, simply type my name into google, with a bit of searching they would soon find my facebook, twitter, tumblr, msn and email address. The internet contains a character profile of anyone who uses these social sites, the more that you use, the bigger your profile is. And this character predictor is becoming more powerful, with adverts being moulded to your likes. Take facebook for example, the right hand side shows multiple advertisements, earlier on in the day you may have googled the shoe shop ‘Office’ later on these adverts will be showing you the shoes you viewed and other shoe sites, tempting you constantly. Basically if you use these social sites regularly, and don’t worry too much about what you put on there, your whole life if displayed at the click of a button. Quite a scary concept when you stop to think.

And even with our lives displayed on these sites the majority of us allow unknown people access to this. Taking my facebook for example, I have 501 friends. Now in real life I’m pretty sure I don’t have 501 friends, even 501 regular acquaintances. 23 of these people I have never met. The majority of them are well known faces from around my town, or people that I’ve spoke to a handful of times. Friends? I don’t think so. Yet I allow them to see my conversations with friends, photographs including me and my friends, my Blackberry pin number, my two email addresses, my twitter, my tumblr, my birthday and where I study. As we spend more and more time on the internet, these social sites become the story of our lives. And all anyone would have to do to find me in person would be to wait for one of those times I put in my status where I am, the rope and anchor pub perhaps, the local starbucks or even priestley college wouldn’t be too hard to find.

And recently it is not just our immediate life that people are showing, but they are now scanning old photographs, showing them as children, and showing other family members such as parents when they were teenagers. Why do we do this? Why do we feel the need to show our lives to other people, friends or strangers. Sometimes I think it is all quite self absorbed, not in the sense that your egotistical, but you put this information out there in hope of getting a response, making yourself feel liked. A need for attention, a need for acceptation.

When Gary joined in the conversation we started to think of how I could show just how shocking the extent of these profiles are. The main idea that we found exciting was to simply show it in the real life environment that I had been working with previously. To pick a person at random, choose a number, count down my friends list until I reached this number and display their life. With my interest in imagery I liked the idea of taking every photo that this person had on their facebook, then doing a search to find any untagged photos of them (these would be on other peoples profiles) and displaying them. On a personal level this may feel wrong, I may feel like im somewhat taking advantage and making a show of this person, but I need to remember that by putting these photos on their site they are allowing people to view them, take them and use them in any way that they like.

I could display these images by simply covering a wall with them, in an almost stalker wall or police investigation manner. Or I could be more 'tasteful' perhaps, find hundreds of photo frames and frame each photo, hang them on the walls, place them on the fireplace, wear them in a locket. Taking this family home set up and turning it into something more shocking, and perhaps a little sinister. I wonder whether this almost stalker approach is in keeping with my concept, but surely these pieces would highlight how we feel the need to communicate so much that perhaps we ignore our own safety, not just in a physical sense, but in a character profile sense. Who knows who could be using this information and what they could be using it for.
The reaction would also become part of the artwork, as I would create this piece without the subject knowing, and then face them with the wall of photographs. It would make them face what they are allowing others to see, surely this would be shocking? But would it make them change their ways, or would it shock them for a second, before forgetting that feeling. It is so common now that we will never change our ways? After all I have been talking about this for a week or two now and I’m still perfectly happy to show everything that I do.

One thing that worries me is the pure scale that this piece could reach. Randomly clicking on a friend I can see that they have 1034 tagged photographs, 12 profile pictures and 796 of their own uploaded photos. Now that is alto of printing credit. But I feel the power of the piece would come from this repetition of images. Much like the work of On Kawara.



More to come on the works of On Kawara.