Exhibition: Spark 2006, Trolly Inc., Waikato Institute of Technology, School of Media Arts, Hamilton, New Zealand
The following text is the what the participants were provided:
Technology has expediate conversation. With this speed has gone our ability to talk through space. All things are immediate; delay is unknown. A generalised ‘we’ are losing the subtleties of the written word; the elation of receiving gifts, parcels; of memorisation. What phone numbers have we committed to memory now that our black book is filed in our mobile phones? What home addresses can we we recollect now that an address has been replaced by electronic alias and email?
The literal places and people we can remember must have some sort of status; our family home (perhaps with new occupants), the address of a good friend who has moved away, the residence of a grandparent or someone we used to write but now type.
Address a postcard(s) with the name and places you can remember. Write a message; you might have to introduce yourself, you may want to provide your own contact details, it may simply be a greeting or an invitation. The postcards will be mailed for you, which will begin the beautiful pause in the conversation.
Participation:
Those present on this particular day of Spark were asked to address a postcard(s) with the name and places he/she could remember. The response to this project was palpable. Some participants asked for several, others asked for only one card. Some wrote to their old addresses. One wrote to the address of her host-family when she had been an exhange student and someone else wrote a beautiful note to her holiday home. One student wrote a letter to her childhood house, asking the open-ended recipient whether or not her house was still there, including her phone number. A week or so on, she received a text message from the Rural Delivery postman who replied with a friendly no that the house was not there anymore, but asked that she tell her parents hello. A colleague wrote to the address of his student-flat wanting to know if the roof still leaked. He heard a reply via email. It did.
