I am a hoarder. In what is a temporary existence, I amass information, pictures, videos, and objects that will infinitely remain as entities that will testify for what I hope to be a profound life. The body engages in space and it absorbs all sorts of information. Documentation serves as a tool to identify how I have engaged in a space (as well as with other bodies in the space) and a guidance to how I can further enhance this engagement.
A habit that formed in Paris, I specifically collect restaurant business cards, take-away menus and visual brochures. There was a quality intriguing about the way the menus or style of the visual objects said about the place. I have a collection started for New York and often refer to it as my personal data or archive. In an effort to unravel the profound value that is behind these instinctive behaviors and personal data, I became invested in analyzing my collection.
As part of the digital investigation of my brochure collection, I revisited the buildings of the restaurants and museums that my data indicated. Using Google Maps as a tool, I bookmarked all of the places indicated by my physical data and went into street view to explore the digital realm of the familiar places. Much like Jenny Odell’s Swimming Pool and Basketball Court in Manhattan, which isolates objects from their original environment and joins an aerial view of similar objects, I sought to identify a pattern with the places I visited to compose them in a meaningful juxtaposition.
Habe-Evans, Mito. “‘Collecting’ Swimming Pools And Stadiums: Art Made From Google Maps.” NPR. July 29, 2011. Accessed May 08, 2017. http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/07/29/138766174/-collecting-swimming-pools-and-stadiums-art-made-from-google-maps.
STUDIO PROCESS
FINISHED PRODUCT
Flowers from Heewon Yun on Vimeo.
