Design III - Focus Statement #1

My focus is the construction of self-identity through the collection of outside information.

My thesis statement was originally, simply: the construction of self-identity.  In the several projects I've been really utilizing information that comes from not myself, but what friends and family have to say about me or to me. Much of what shapes the self comes from the outside, how parents raise and teach, how friends interact with, and how one collects and carries the information they receive from these various sources.

Annotated Image Collection

Sticks and Stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me, Various Students, Berlin, June 2010

  The Sticks and Stones project put these student outside their comfort zone and into a very vulnerable position. They proposition strangers walking around on the streets of Berlin to write what they though of the students on the back of their shirts. This project really inspired me because it's very similar to how I've been conducting my research. The labels we carry with us have been made physical and sometimes prove to be a very heavy burden.

When you is only you, Toro Elmar, September 8, 2010

This is one of many works from the website collection of "Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far." This collaboration that asks us all to artistically express through photography, type, video, and so on some important bit of information that we've learned in our life so far. This is inspiring because it's built up of important blocks of information that are important factors in someone's life. We can look at all these examples; internalize and apply the to our own lives. This is a good way of constructing self-identity.

I Love You, Graphic Hug's Group Project, October 2008

 The I Love You Project was a collaboration by all the contributors to Graphic Hug. The idea was to see how many different way can someone typeset I Love You and have it read as emotional as it was felt or intending someone else to feel. This ties into my thesis, as well my 24 Hour Narrative, because it's about the typographic, most of the time electronic, transfer of emotion. We are constructed by how others feel, how we make them feel, and how they make us feel.