A little while ago I started the side exercise of creating posters that summarise the moods & communications of the rooms and their content into a smaller, two dimensional medium. ie, if objects and their arrangements are a language, how can that language be translated to another format?
Here's one of the finished posters, followed by a short explanation.



framing purdy

Everything in purdy’s space has a purpose and a position. Delicately and lovingly, even the smallest of objects has been positioned with thought and given its own respectful part in the display. She is an expert at “framing” an object - metaphorically and literally. Nostalgia is strong, revealing a sentimental and thoughtful soul.

On Friday I found this book Arranging Things which mirrors an incredible amount of my essay (but probably articulating ideas a lot better than me). If only I'd found this earlier. It's still great to clarify and validate a lot of what I've been thinking. Some excerpts below (I've bolded the parts which especially connect with my theories and "room-snoop" experiment):

Arranging things has two aspects: (1) the selection of objects - things - and (2) the manner in which the objects are arranged. Arranging things in both the commerical and non-commercial realms have this in common: arrangements always communicate something.* An arrangement of things is not just an aesthetic expression; it is a communicational act.

In many cases arrangement is language-like... Though the domain of arranging things is not nearly systematic enough to qualify as a bona-fide language, it is systematic enough to a degree. Communication systems, like natural languages, grow and develop through perpetual use and experimentation.

Rhetoric, as Aristotle wrote, is "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." All communication is rhetorical, to some degree. If you're not attempting to get someone to see, feel, think or act in a particular manner, why bother communicating at all? Anyone who communicates today is profoundly influenced by rhetoric. As communicators we incessantly make choices regarding which words, phrases, images and/or sounds to use based on rhetorical considerations - albeit not always consciously.

*The author notes that "communicating something" means transmitting meaning - any kind of meaning - to the arrangement's viewers, or, in a self-reflective way, back to the arranger her/himself. In my experiment I also considered that the manner of our possession-keeping might simply be a self-validating message addressing our self-identity.

Photos from the first room swap: in which Sally invades Purdy's room. Fascinating to compare answers from each of them about Purdy's bits and pieces.

After some feedback yesterday about documenting this process I'm much clearer on the direction I should take. I'm going to guide it two separate ways:
1. The "raw" documentation from the experiment (in a thoughtful format of course, most likely a book).
2. A fairly freeform collection of visual responses I create myself (eg. object mapping, gathering commonalities, reconstructing ideas visually).

I'm still collecting some ideas on documenting this experiment.

1: Perhaps I could "map" the bedrooms in a similar manner to this plant species labelling.

2: I had the thought of physically using bits and pieces found in peoples' bedrooms to illustrate their possessions. ie: the paper-steam in the top left picture - imagine an old phone bill from someone's drawer cut up and used in my image-making.

3: This picture is so great that I just don't know what to say.

Thanks Penrose Annual 1965.

August +

This is the part where I take all my bits and pieces, ideas thoughts and inspiration and squeeze it out (gradually) into something wonderful and intriguing.
A large part of my essay involved avoiding the idea of "collecting" being restricted to the association of a hobby. Instead, I consider collecting to be the general human tendency to gather and acquire - the fact that we keep "things" and the manner in which we keep them. What do such things communicate, if anything at all? From here I travelled in all different directions, but stopped for a long time at the idea of collection as personal expression. That we acquire pieces in order to communicate who we are - whether to others or as some sort of confirmation of our sense of self-identity.

I'm testing this theory as well as my organisational skills in a loose and creative social experiment. Taking a large group of my friends, I'll divide them into pairs of people who don't know each other. Not having met one another and knowing nothing about the other, both members of the pair will visit the other's home or bedroom with me, have a long and investigative look around, and come to all sorts of conclusions about the sort of person they are. Answering a questionnaire I develop, they might have to guess at anything from physical appearance to dream holiday destination or favourite flavour of dip.
After all this, I'll document it. I don't know how but I know this is the crucial part. I don't want to forget what drew me to this topic in the first place - that I'm very attracted to the eclectic potential of multiplicity. Collecting as a theme lends itself to quirky and unexpected representation. At this point I'm open to the forms it could take (anything from a publication to a series of large posters to a mini exhibition/installation type thingy) and I'm absorbing lots of interesting ways to communicate multiplicity in general.

Artist David Capra interviewed in Blanket Magazine's collection issue:

"A lot of my work is a result of collecting... I prefer to work this way as I can put down various unrelated things together on the one page and watch them create a dialogue between one another... Since an early age I have collected various things, like a strange coping mechanism, it gives me a sense of accomplishment when I look at what I have gathered together and life then feels more manageable."

collecting ideas on collecting

Blogging:
What are these sort of websites, really, but a modern form of collection? The ideas of others are gathered into a cohesive stream (linear, chronologically arranged) and shared expressively. Essentially, a lovely contemporary evolution of the humble scrapbook.

I've been thinking recently about the process of collaging being another form of collecting (ie gathering and arranging 2D imagery on a page) - it's a form which illicits a more specific narrative. This is a nice example of that.

the owls are watching

I had a tip-off from Marilyn about a bookshop on Swanston St which specializes in rare and antique books, but more interestingly also houses amongst them hundreds and hundreds of owls. When I asked about their story, I was told the owner was once given an owl years ago and then "people just kept giving them to her. They also happen to go well with the books."

Judith Pascoe wrote a fascinating little book called The Hummingbird Cabinet - A Rare and Curious History of Romantic Collectors. The section detailing the passionate collecting of hummingbirds in the early 1800s emphasizes how much the nature of display provides insight into the intentions and sentiments which drive the pursuit of a collection. In the context of the London Natural History museum, Pascoe details a contrast in the museum's modern purposes and those of the hummingbird display:

The hummingbird cabinet that survives in the Natural History Museum is positioned in close proximity to a beak exhibit featuring the severed heads of puffin, butcher bird, and hornbill. The signage in the gallery is defensive in tone. Posted next to the hummingbird cabinet is a small cardboard placard headed with the phrase "An Antique Collection"... The Natural History Museum wants visitors to know that the specimens in this gallery are from the museum's historical bird collection, "which dates back over the last two hundred years." A card attached to a floor-to-ceiling case concedes that "the Museum no longer has an active collecting programme and would only display new speciments within rigorous conservation guidelines". The gallery's curators anticipate the opening of "a new, permanent bird gallery, presenting a contemporary view of bird biology, ecology and conservation using some of the latest techniques in multi-media display."

The new gallery will be unlikely to shed any light on the longings and desires that were evoked by hummingbirds in the romantic period. It will not, I expect, help us to see how romantic modes of feeling fueled the pursuit of hummingbirds, or how they influenced the style of their display, or why they drove some admirers of the birds to a state of desolate despair. To understand those things, you are better off studying the antique hummingbird cabinet even though it uses one medium, presents an innacurate view of bird biology, and has nothing to say about ecology and convervation.

The hummingbird cabinet is large but easy to overlook; from a distance it looks like a neglected terrarium in which the foliage has been allowed to dry. But if you peer closely at this desiccated thicket, it blooms with hundreds of hummingbirds posed stiffly on every branch.


Two different displays, and two very different ideas about why these items were worth displaying. As we “read the arrangement” of a collection, the message it communicates becomes quite defined.

This book Taking Things Seriously - 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance is a quirky find of a friend of mine. It's basically a collection in itself of stories and sentimentality - a photo and a description to a spread. It really has more insight into the owners and their personalities than the pieces themselves.

The blog poppytalk documents various people's collections, with photos of how they're displayed as well as interviews investigating the meaning behind their collections. A lot of these interview-ees seem to be more interested in the aesthetic or mood of their pieces rather than their original purpose. A favourite statement which seems a common sentiment is: "I've never consciously started a "collection". I've always bought what I like and sometimes my buys turn into collections simply by accumulating."

polaroid charm

esoule has a collection of animal figurines which she has pooled as a collection of polaroids here. she uses the location/backdrop of the photographs quite beautifully (I particularly like the ostrich facing a crack in the wall).

I have a bit of a flickr addiction - every day I'm in awe of the array of amazing photography (from professional to equally charmingly amateur). It seems I'm not the only one interested in photos of collections - the image pool organized collection documents photos of anything from autumn leaves to hands (above). I guess having 'organized' in the title reveals in itself the thought behind collection placement and arrangement. I love the tendency to lay objects out on a flat surface at right angles, or to organise related to colour.

bits in boxes.

Myself and a good friend have noticed a definite trend recently in books and similarly published material - everything is all a little more bits and piecey and touchy feely. Rather than simply photographed on a page, collections presented are just as likely to be reproduced as loose material similar to their original state.
Two examples:





Infamous McSweeney's literary journal, Issue 19: Housed in a cigar box, the journal includes a 144-page paperback alongside a varying array of replicas of historical pamphlets, facsimile letters and flyers. Quite a delight to open and pick up one by one (a favourite birthday present of mine).





Replicas of vintage illustrations as postcards in a box. Lovely to sift through the stack. Published by Chronicle Books.

What is so appealing about a group of objects placed together with the common element of colour?
This arrangement by expert collector Lisa Congdon.