public/ private commenting

The comments table at the Wellcome Collection provides a nice metaphor for the phycology of commenting. Some people like to comment directly in private, some in public. Public commenting provides a much richer social interaction and documented narrative though, making the process of commenting and reading comments a reward in itself.

It also extends to the nature of their latest exhibition, Bobby Baker's Diary Drawings: Mental illness and me. What was once a series of private thoughts contained in these sketch books.

Has now been made public for visitors to learn from a unique window into the largely undocumented world of mental illness. Which is kind of what art is all about for me, visualising and representing stuff that was otherwise uncaptured.

Comments

[ted at innocent]

More on the world of the unseen...

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-07/17/ted-turns-its-attention-to-the-world-unseen.aspx

http://letsbehumanbeings.typepad.com/letsbehumanbeings/2008/09/into-the-deep.html

The true voyage of discovery is not so much in seeking new landscapes, as in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

[james]

ted, i think you'd like a piece in the 8 newspaper which bbc r&d just put out in association with @newspaperclub.

there's an essay (written by that clever @kidmapper fellow) about how the beeb might approach capturing people's commentary around news footage in more engaging ways...and a suggestion for how rfid and other technologies could make things like war memorials a longer lasting, more social, layered narrative.

so, yeah.

pick up a pdf or get details of how to obtain a printed copy:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/knowledgeexchange/2009/06/the_power_of_8.html

[ted at innocent]

Cheers James, have just requested a copy from the beeb. Very interested in the potential of RFID stuff at the minute.