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seminar

Fall 2003

Course #908

Drew Malcolm

The Myth of Bodies

Did you ever wonder about the life of a complete stranger? In passing on the street, have you suddenly become curious about who someone is, or through what experiences they have arrived at their current station in life? If so was your assessment prompted or influenced by physical characteristics such as clothing, hairstyle or body language? Maybe the type of shoes worn by a stranger gives you a clue about their favorite recreational activity, or their hairstyle indicates where they grew up. Or is it impossible to judge a book by its cover? Does an individual’s choice in ‘style’ or lack thereof, provide a reliable indication of personality? It is the goal of this web-project to explore this cultural tendency. Through an anonymous survey, participants will divulge information about themselves. The information acquired through the survey will be used to simplify the participant’s “personality” (their responses) down to a simple visual/stylistic representation (a logo). The logo along with the participant’s survey responses will then be added to a ‘population’ of other participants. My goals for this project are to experiment with identity, and how it is construed through our modes of representation in the physical world. The World Wide Web is commonly seen as a sort of cold, impersonal commercial entity. I want to explore the human aspects of its users, the parts we don’t really see in our typical movement through cyberspace, in order to reveal individual identities. A secondary interest being explored in this project is the degree to which the artist’s hand must be removed from an artwork in order to make it truly public.

© 2023 by Laurie Beth Clark

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