We are so connected in today’s that I wanted to explore how meaning full these interactions are. The physical act of getting mail is more meaningful than receiving email today. I wanted to explore more than just how we communicate over a distance and touch on why we communicate over a distance. Is someone posting happy birthday on your facebook wall more meaningful than receiving a birthday wish through snail mail. Although the facesbooks ease of connection allows us to stay in touch with hundreds of of friends at any one time, what makes these connections have value. I would say that my approach to this is less of an experiment and more of an exploration. An experiment lacking all variable control to measure the success of the interaction but it has lead to some interesting discoveries. The lack of a control also speaks to the nature of the project in that all the media we use to connect are full of control and each media informs how we interact with one another, and how we are somewhat constrained what these media allow.
In these series of meaningful interactions i attempted to take the feeling of receiving physical mail and transfer it to a various digital social media. A few examples are that I sent my mom on a short internet scavenger hunt to wish her happy birthday, i congratulated friends who were getting married, i ask a simple question about programing similar to g chat (a one liner that will take days to receive the answer.) Some of these were met with confusion and others with clever responses, one of which i received in a cryptic note in the mail that i decoded to read “do you smell what the rock is cooking” i was confused as i am sure the recipients of my messages were, but it was a much more meaningful interaction than an email. All recipients got a different form of messages: drawings, hand written url links, QR codes linking to url all leading to a handwritten note online or a postcard like picture or some received tweets. some others received qr postcards, qr text and SMS messages and even QR phone call options. How these people responded to to the message was left up to them and i got a variety of responses as well.
one of the challenges i faced with this project was a way to make it easy for them to interact but in a different or meaningful way hopefully. I am curious what my mom though of the twitter message, but i also wonder how those who were directed to my website with a letter felt about replying via my personal website via form submission. I have found that there isn’t a huge rush to reply with these which is an obvious difference from email. another challenge i ran into was more of a technical one consisting of php script allowing those who receive letters to share a collective twitter account “friendsofbrian” which is title borrowed from a previous project but still very appropriate. since not all letters have been sent until i get my @friendsofbrian tweets from my site those will ramain unsent so i can further explore this medium.
i will leave with a few links to specific letters since they are one my server and not linking to anything in particular yet.
http://t-wreks.com/dearjessie.php
http://t-wreks.com/dear/sentjoe.html
http://t-wreks.com/dear/mom.html
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