Exploring Space

           A scenario unfolds. You receive a box in the mail from an unknown person with CONFIDENTIAL scribbled across the top. You open it and you find surveillance footage, pieces of conversation as well as other bits of postal paraphernalia. Where did this come from? Who sent this? Why did I get this? What am I supposed to do with this information? All of these questions are running through your head. This is what I hoped to invoke with my piece – the confusion of getting a package full of surveillance footage.

In order to get surveillance-type footage I actually had to conduct my own surveillance. I put my video camera in my mailbox and recorded for two hours. I then watched the full two hours and took still shots from the footage. With these images I put a few of them on the box itself as well as spilling out from the box. They overlap like you just dumped them out and are trying somehow to make sense of them all – even though it is almost impossible. This would be my example of layering.

I then recorded conversations using a digital recorder placed inside my mailbox. With this I listened to everything and wrote down anything I could understand and that was interesting. These snippets of conversation are small and glued onto random images that do not necessarily go with the conversations. I used this combination of image and text to add to the confusion of the piece.

There are letters and numbers mixed in with the images because in the mailroom there are mailboxes numbered from one to over one thousand and the letters A through Z where the mailroom workers put packages for patrons to pick up. Everything on the piece is taped together with packing tape because that is what you would use to send a package and because it was used frequently in the mailroom. Also, not all the pieces of tape are pressed down securely because in the mail room there were instances of peeling tape. Stamps are on the piece as well because they again lead to the post office.

I really hoped to give a sense of confusion as well as an uncomfortable feeling that “maybe I shouldn’t really be seeing these pictures.” I wanted the viewer to not be able to fully understand the piece and to have to walk up to it and study the images. And even after really looking close not really understand why they are seeing the images or what they are supposed to do with the information they have been given.