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.