Margot Lovejoy
T U R N S www.myturningpoint.com T U R N S is a community-building Web site focused on the idea of collecting and sharing the story of a turning point in one's life. The site's interface is designed as a map that may be reorganized according to multiple criteria. Stories are represented as pebble-like shapes that can be opened and returned to the narrative pool. Visitors to T U R N S can contribute their narrative and browse stories according to 12 categories such as education, relationships, health, trauma, family, or war. The Topics section of the site allows users to reorganize the stories through relational filters - such as ethnicity or the time at which the turning point was experienced - and to access related databases. People may also contribute by drawing a "life map", visually representing the course of their lives. T U R N S provides connections to lives lived under many circumstances and time periods. Seen through relational filters, lenses and links, one's story is understood as part of social memory. The site is also a reflection on the ways new media are influencing and changing notions of the individual in social contexts. With its possibilities for creating networked communities and relational databases, the Internet becomes a form of collective, social consciousness. Re-purposed as an interactive installation, T U R N S will be accompanied by public workshops encouraging public participation in story writing or Memory Mapping as part of a continuing cultural process. T U R N S is designed as a fully participatory experience, one that privileges the experience of the audience over the intentions of the artist. The artist becomes more of an ethnographer, creating a "frame" or context which provides an environment for learning and exchange. Such community based systems utilize processes of exchange, learning and adaptation and are built on the premise that meaning in a work of art is dependent upon exchange and communication between individuals and groups. Such systems provide a context for participants to reflect their personal understandings about their own social and political contexts. Margot Lovejoy New York |
