AMY HUNG | Parsons MFADT Thesis

[09.17.02]

"How many people can walk through a city and prove they were there? It's a sign I was here. My hand made this mark. I'm fucking alive!"-Omar, New York [1]

My concept stems from the idea of graffiti, a visual self-expression, carried forth and displayed in public spaces, initially by urban youths, often in an effort to be seen, heard, and remembered in their non-inclusive environment. The allure of this medium of art is not just the mark, trace, or message that the writer imparts but also the acknowledgement and response the viewer delivers upon discovering someone's "tag". Thus, a new form of communication emerged from the streets of New York City. Graffiti allowed for a marginalized segment of the population that lacked consumer, political, and social power to acquire the access and ability to influence their physical and cultural surroundings. By broadcasting their voice through visual representation, these urban youths asserted and established the power of both their presence and identity within the city environs.

Presently, accessibility to public terrain, physical and digital, is shrinking from our daily grasps. Our tangible landscape has become an overgrowth of billboards, advertisements, and flyers incessantly declaring the existence of corporate America and our consumer culture. "Commercial expression" has multiplied, flourished, and outweighed human self-expression. Our space has become more determined for us rather than created by us; and along with that a loss in our means, mode, and opportunities for diverse self-expression. Furthermore, as technology embeds into culture, one's purchasing power increasingly defines one's involvement within society and its development. Likewise, in the digital arena, the massive influence and ubiquity of the Internet has generated interest and movement to gain control of the production and distribution of information from the hands of the individual to the board of the private organization. Therefore, the ability to become and remain a part of the physical and digital panorama depends on one's power to consume, possess, and commercialize.

For my thesis, I am interested in exploring other methods, forms, and behavior that we apply and display in our public space to reach the people around us. How does technology shape and engage the individual's ability to assert his/her identity? How can it be used to equalize our accessibility to self-expression within our physical and digital environments? How can it enrich our experience with each other? I am concerned with our present and future opportunities to remain a part of our physical and virtual landscapes, and, also with our ability to continually contribute to it. I would like to create either a site or an application that would allow users a means and an opportunity to be seen, heard, and remembered by leaving a piece of themselves - a trace, remnant, marking, or message contributing to a structure or space in which future users can partake, discover, and respond; and thus, for connections to follow.

[1] "Urban Expression...Urban Assault...Urban Wildstyle...New York City Graffiti", Pamela Dennant, www.graffiti.org, 1997.