Shirts

People contemplating their prerequisites for sex

People of privilege contemplating their prerequisites for sex

People with eidetic memory watching re-runs of "Criminal Minds"

People who've done immoral things in the name of "providing for their family"

People practicing that critical first impression

People just before they've mishandled that critical first impression

Multifarious adults practicing for that critical first impression

The greatest stock night of our young beautiful lives

Unqualified individuals practicing for that critical first impression

Incidental individuals practicing for that critical first impression

Stock caucasian women fanning foreign money

People wishing they hadn't made that comment / People with headaches

Stock hetero couples updating statuses to "In a relationship"
People elatedly receiving friend request from someone they like
People receiving a friend request from a new crush
People receiving a friend request from someone they really like

Yesterday at 2:19pm

Drawing from the popular cultures of award recognition programs and social media, I chose to present exquisite, professionally manufactured recognition accolades that can simultaneously elevate and deprecate the experiences of online social behavior (communication) and material award (appreciation). By promoting the mundane to an award-level, these objects are perhaps cheapened, so as to heighten the banal (sometimes automated/sometimes personal) vernacular of the social media experience.

By recontextualizing materials and messages (piano-finished plaques, for instance, laser engraved with Facebook status updates) I hope to provoke new meanings and raise a few questions: What exactly is award-worthy? What is remarkable? Will the public announcement of a few new "friends" elevate my standing amongst my other acquaintances? Or is this just a starting place for judgment? Is a comment an endorsement? What do the sliding scales of acknowledgement look like?

Transforming something digital into something physical negates the two-way interactivity inherent in Facebook: you can only look at the 'Like' button and never press into it to leave your mark. The plaques and trophies serve as static relics and would-be monuments, doomed to become dated with every enhancement to Facebook's visual look-and-feel and each internal functionality adjustment. The status updates have been pulled offline and thrust into the tangible world; permanently engraved in metal: will they last for a thousand years? perhaps as long as the Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs? proving that once you put something out there (online) you can never, in fact, get it back? What is today's reward for my online presence? Will people remember this? Will people like this? 

As far as a "look" (this look) I knew I had to use Lucida Grande - the defacto Facebook font in 2011. It was clear to me from the start of this project that perhaps as a result of Facebook more eyeballs are on Lucida Grande everyday than any other font in history. I wondered if regular folks at the show would know this font's name and recognize it's form, and if not, would they subconsciously identify with it? Is there such a thing as visual credibility?

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“Things That Are Longing To Appear” is a storefront installation / window display by

artist Bill Talsma that consists of six modified ‘open & closed’ signs presented at 244 W.

31 st Street in Chicago. These signs—the kind usually displayed at small businesses—have

been redesigned, rewritten and combined together to form a master sentence that spans

the 6 objects. Subsequently, thoughts about the reappearance of things as reproduction

are simultaneously woven across the signs (and through the master sentence) with

smaller, prefabricated marquee-style letters.

we are really going

to get going here

in a few minuets

- thank you -

it’s worth noting that

(check. check.)

THINGS

THAT

were not noteworthy

may become so

- today / tonight / again -

and my god

you really are a

- lovely crowd -

ARE

you working out

because you

look great

better than land-

scape as photography

or

travel as rick steves

-or-

all the

digital pictures be

LONGING

TO

all the teenagers

with camera phones

(testing. testing.)

texting the messages

that want to be

ideated on the wall

- as if -

they had always

been there just

waiting to re

APPEAR