The Life Lessons Wall - De-privatizing emotional space and social connectedness.

The Life Lessons Project examines the impact of technology on the expression and interpretation of identity and emotions. Specifically, the ways in which the ‘privatization of the social world’, and social capital, has in fact expanded previous notions of social connectedness as well as changed its nature. Individual perception, experience, and emotion have become the fabric of a public identity constructed in the expanse of a multimedia social space. Those privy to this aspect of individual and collective experience include more than simply the mother, the lover, and the therapist. It includes the whole of this social space, of cyber space. It has become abstracted from the context in which it was created. Cyberspace and the rise of online journals and personal websites have created a method of externalizing internal processes wide audiences while maintaining a form of anonymity through the creation of public private identities. Individuals present emotions for assessment of others, and in an attempt to connect with others wholly removed from face to face experience and removed from any “subjective” knowledge of the individuals self. With this, however, has come the extension of the commodification of emotional release; paying for therapy or paying for the space to express these aspects of ones experience in a public manner.

While day-to-day interpersonal social mores in regards to expression of emotion appear to remain the same, the creation of this new form of expression has allowed for a new way of developing social connectedness that allows for the creation of social capital based experiential connection and the individuals created and presented identity. This has the potential to reveal a deeper understanding on the ways in which bridging capital can be formed.
In this vein the project The Life Lessons Wall seeks to reconnect physical public space with new conceptions of social space through public projections of collected material from blogs and the collection of ‘life lessons’ submitted online. It works to bring this private public emoting into a physical public space, reterritorializing the social world.

Life Lessons have been and will continue to be collected and added to a database for public projection. No identification of individuals will occur within the projection however a demographic analysis of participants will be available. Similarly, a qualitative text analysis will be employed and available post projection. Further, the creation of purchasable “life lessons walls” in the form of digital frames that present the owners with a collection of individual thoughts and statements about their lives will be available for a fee.

Submissions for the project can be both anonymous or can include your name. Submitting indicates that you allow the submitted material to be used in this project. Though words will not be altered, submissions may be edited for length.

Small or Large, profound or trite, send some things you’ve learned about life as you’ve grown. These will be added to a compilation of life lessons for use in a public art work. Please keep them to a sentence or so each, but send as many as you like. Include your email if you’d like to receive updates on the project.

submit your life lessons here

 or visit the project site here

August 31st, 2008 | Uncategorized