Last night I went to a talk at the Ffotogallery in Penarth, it was called ‘Confessions of a recovering Data Collector.’ Given by Ellie Harrison, who started her almost obssesion with data collecting on her 22nd Birthday by taking a picture of, and recording everything she ate for a year and a day, with over 1000 images she then put them all into an animation, which made it look like she was continuously eating. There have been other projects since, which have been a little more obssesive, where she recorded what she was doing and when, all day every day for four weeks and put it together in a chart:
Our Next project at Uni is going to be all about portraying information and I’ve been having a think about data collection and the way that I already do it, and think about little projects that I could do. I already write a diary, not every single day but have been doing it since I was 16 and it’s so funny to read back. I look back on it and remember how I was feeling about a certain situation. My language was so different at that time too, well, my London dialect used to come out a lot in my writing back then. I also wanted to take a photo of my hands every day, because I used to bite my nails, a terrible disgusting habit I know, but if I took a photo of my hands every day then I wouldn’t be tempted to bite them because I’d want them to look nice for the photos, I might still do that, as I haven’t completely stopped. Social Networking is almost like an obsession with data collection too, writing statuses, and even blogging can be a version of data collection. Check out her website, there’s some really interesting stuff on there and she’s got a book out too, ‘confessions of a recovering data collector.’
This piece, by NB:Studio is a map of London but instead of the roads, there are the names of the roads, I think that it is a great typographic piece but if I was using it as a map, I’d probably still get as lost around London as I do now!
On first glimpse it looks like a really colourful pattern but then on closer inspection it is a collection of english and chinese typography making up the pattern. Most of Tsang’s pieces work in this way. They are truly beautiful! Mostly installation pieces painted on walls of huge rooms, they are all made up of tiny pieces of typography – some quite rude!
This book, I found in the depths of the Amazon listings a while back and it’s been on my wish list for years but only because I thought it might be useful for me, maybe someone recommended it to me. I don’t remember, but I finally borrowed it from the library the other day and I haven’t closed it. It’s been there by my side, whenever I felt a bit uninspired, I’ve looked at it and it’s picked my spirits up 150%. I reluctantly talk about Christmas however because it’s way too soon to be talking about it. Maybe I’ll have to get this book before Christmas or continuously re-new it from the library, I don’t want it to leave my side!
Does anyone know of anyone who has an e-reader, whether it be the Amazon Kindle or some other reader, preferably with books loaded onto it?