smap shout out!!

Hi Smapsters! (cringe worthy I know...)

Firstly we want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your involvement in smap to-date. It feels as though the project is really starting to gain momentum. The images that we're getting back are really exciting, and the extent to which the smap's have travelled (internationally too!) has surpassed our expectations.

We're slowly creeping towards the time whereby we can begin to exhibit the results, and we hope that this is something that each of you would want to once again be a part of. As and when we do, we will keep you posted.

In the meantime however, if any of you have any suggestions/queries about the project to-date, please don't hesitate to contact us as we really appreciate your feedback.

Long live s.m.a.p!!

Lizzie, Amanda and Andre
secretmailedartproject@gmail.com

lost things

Every now and then I wonder if our s.m.a.p.s might not make it back. They might instead just lie in waiting somewhere with the responses lost inside them. I hope they don't become lost things...

mail me art

flipping notes on biology...

I have become a little distracted by stop motion films. I made a very simple flip book for a s.m.a.p this however is in a whole other league.

postal project

http://www.postalproject.co.uk/

 A similar concept, within the confines of a book.

"conversations over time and across distances"

post it notes

Found this stop motion film and couldn't resist putting it on here. How it relates to s.m.a.p is gloriously tenuous. However it does make me reconsider everyday objects...

the sounds of images, the images of sounds

I enjoy the 'call and response' process of this mail art project. The work in this video is fascinating because it exists outside words and the full narrative wasn't available to the participants. Each participant either responded to an image with sounds or vice versa, before passing their response on to the next participant.

postal strike!

This project is about playing with post boxes. Its about reinventing our experience of those iconic red containers. The instigators are fellow art and design students and my favourite images so far are the washer woman, the doctor, the nun and the 'old lady' walking a dog. Its that wonderfully British nuttiness which we don't celebrate enough.

http://postalstrike.blogspot.com/

listening post

Just discovered this installation by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin. Its brilliant! I missed it at the science museum but the video clips at least gives an impression of what it was like. There is more detailed information on the science museum website.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/~/link.aspx?_id=822C31BCD5734CDE94E701ED170F4909&_z=z

While s.m.a.p reveals participants' individual, creative responses to a selected instruction, the listening post is composed of direct quotations from multiple chat room conversations with, I imagine, hundreds of thousands of anonymous participants. The listening post is almost a programmed, global stream of consciousness.

recording s.m.a.p

I have been preoccupied lately with how we record and display the secret mailed art project.
Current thoughts include the s.m.a.p unwrap experience - where smappers of each series play pass the parcel with the returned package. I like the idea of revelation in stages. After that there is the publication and exhibition where s.m.a.p becomes visible to everyone. In the meantime there is the s.m.a.p map. Which should start to emerge within the next month.

Whilst considering how to record and show s.m.a.p I came across this essay:

http://www.spareroom.org/mailart/arch_ess.html

First ever christmas delivery

Long live s.m.a.p!!

post by numbers?

http://www.ehow.com/how_2110892_send-postal-art.html

...for those of you who love the security of "step-by-step"

please mr postman

I grew up with this song and its appropriate for the s.m.a.p. waiting process.
If the postman returning the s.m.a.p.s chooses to dress up as Mickey Mouse, well that's a bonus!

snap the world

Thanks Dave for the tip off on the disposable memory project.
Brilliant -- leaving disposable cameras around the world for people to find, use and return.

http://disposablememoryproject.org/

Makes me want to s.m.a.p the world!

Location, Vocation, Vacation

I appreciate the longevity and inventiveness of this postcard project. Its reassuring that only five postcards out of around 150 went astray.


http://www.riittaikonen.com/projects/mail-art/ 

Apologies Anonymous

This film runs in the vein of the post secret. The absence presence of answerphone messages is something I have explored a little because I find disembodied voices compelling. The apology line is in turns both disturbing and fascinating. Its beautifully shot and it sits quite comfortably in the lineage of mail art too...

Post Secret

http://www.postsecret.com/

Postcards from Paris

I went to Trove in January for the Paris Correspondence School exhibition. It opened up a whole new world of postal art. The postcards were beautifully displayed using perspex pillars. The interventions and responses that different participants had made were intriguing - one of my favourites was the blackberry fingerprints series....




http://trove.org.uk/exhibitions/january-2011-paris-correspondence-school/

Message in a bottle

A beautiful stop frame animation by Kirsten Lepore. 
The principle of sending meaningful items, as a form of communication was reason enough for me to put it on here...

Postal Art

This form of 'postal art' lends itself rather beautifully to s.m.a.p. In an era when the General Post Office had its very own film unit and art was appropriated without dilution.

Are you smap?

Hints on wrapping parcels

Dead Letter

dead·-letter office (ded′let′ər)

the postal department to which dead letters are sent to be opened and returned to the sender, if possible, or destroyed