Last summer, I rented a car and went to travel around America for 45 days to capture and retell a story of what America was as through a series of images. I was traveling from city to city, letting the signs lead me to discover more. When I explored the realm of street art, I, accidently, found that people attached their messages to a post in the street in hopes to communicate their message: commonly related to advertising, warnings, prohibitions, sales, patterns and political agendas. Moreover, people continuously attaches new posters over another creating a palimpsest of meaning. It made me exciting because of its spontaneous beauty and messages in the public space. This experience allowed me to re-recognize the role of medium and the public space in our society and made me decide to observe the spontaneous moments in this space.
In order to experiment this beauty, I designed a modified phone that makes a random bell sound to attract people’s attention. When people pick up the phone, they will listen to the message, “please leave a message”. They can leave any message including political issues, self advertising, and personal secrets. The new messages that people continuously leave over others are recorded by the phone creating layered, covered, deteriorated, and renewed meanings similar to posters on a post.
This leaves traces of ordinary people trying to communicate with other people who are telling stories in their unique voices. I devoted my time to investigate their spontaneous meanings produced by the voice over recoding in the public and to concentrate how these messages can create aesthetics as a symphony in conjunction with each other.
