For my final assessment, I have successfully attracted 33 participants to take part in my event. In these 33 participants, half of them would rather hand the postcard to their friend in person, as they are on the campus, which I am quite jealous about, because I find it hard to know friends on campus, and have recently discovered that the 'friends' I have made here does not treat or view me as their friend.
For my final assessment, I will be handing postcards for people to show care and love to their friends. However, in order to make this happen, I have to rent a booth from the Students Union, create a Facebook page and post posters around the campus to attract and encourage more people to come visit my booth.
Andy Leek- 'notes to strangers'- Aims to help people who are struggling and sharing lessons he learnt while going through his mental issues - Posts colourful posters of inspiring quotes and phrases on the streets of London - Left these notes for people to discover on their own - While leaving an instagram account at the bottom of the poster for people to tag him when they found one of his posters - The instagram account is his way of interacting with people, reading people's positive reactions and replies to his posters - Furthermore, Instagram lets him gain a bigger audience as well, as people take photos of his posters and share it on Instagram, more people from all over the world will be able to see his posters Incorporating Instagram to my work: - Encourage more people to send postcards to one another, and openly confess their appreciation and love to their friend Charles simic- 'The lost art of postcard writing', 2011Click here to view the article
In the article, Simic pointed out that postcards is not only about choosing the 'right' card, with an image of a famous place, it is also about the process of writing one, where people put down their emotions and thoughts to the people they are writing to, and the thought process of writing the postcard. Incorporating Postcard to my work: - At first, my initial plan was to invite participants to write letters to their friends, however 'Unlike letter writing, there never has been, and there never could be, an anthology of the best of postcard writing, because when people collect postcards, it's usually for reasons other than their literary qualities' (Simic, 2011) - Instead of using a famous site for the cover of the postcard, I will be inserting a quote/ phrase with a suitable background to let the people who are receiving the postcard know that they are being valued and appreciated by their friends, and hope they will do the same to those who sent them the postcard My project's main focus is on the emotional bonding and perspectives from the lost tradition of written communication in forms of writing postcards. I personally like receiving postcards from my friends and family, the excitement and emotional bonding originated from reading what they have written, and the photo on the other side are simply unforgettable, it drags me towards joining their trip and tells me that wherever they go, they still remember me and keep me in mind. However, since the age of internet, this form of written communication slowly diminished, and got replaced by instant messaging and shared photos on social media that lack the tangible emotional substance written communication have.
To me, a postcard is not simply a messaging tool, but a container for emotions, ones trip condensed into lines of words to let the other have a taste of their perspective. Needless to say, ones friendship could also be strengthen or reminded through a simple gesture of a postcard. By writing the postcard, people's emotion flows out and got infused to their words, their drawing, and this is what I would like to explore in this project. Participants are expected to be reminded about their friendship during the postcard writing, and from that experience a mix of emotion based on each persons unique back story. On my side, I would be interacting with the participants to understand the back story leading to the content of the postcard, and be recording a voice over by the writer for the postcard to better capture the emotions expressed as a documentation of the project, but from that also to reflect on how different people holds different values on friendship compared to mine. These postcard and voice over will then be uploaded to instagram as a final exploration on how tangible and intangible form of communication interacts with each other, as well as a form to encourage more people to send out postcards to those they care and love. Lancaster university is the home for many ducks and ducklings, and the pond near LICA building is their main base. They usually scatter around the grass or swim in the pond while curiously observing busy university students.While the ducks are always there surrounding the students, not many students have stopped to observe the ducks or interact with them. On the 6th of November, Kathryn Tovey has created a collaborative mapping exercise for the participants to map the movement of the ducks and use this opportunity to observe whether the ducks move in certain patterns.
|
AboutArtworks created in terms of time, space and location |