Journal of Memories

"Sixth College's Practicum is a mandatory upper-division requirement that engages students in the creative process. To graduate from Sixth College, you must initiate, plan, and execute a Practicum project that connects your classroom-based experiences and knowledge to the outlying community, while at the same time exploring the interplay of culture, art, and technology" (University of California, San Diego, Sixth College).

Remi Rhodes
Practicum Project Proposal
Media Arts, Computer Emphasis
Winter Quarter 2007
Sixth College, UCSD

THESIS
Whether we are artists, writers, composers or individuals involved in some other form of creating, we appropriate other ideas into our own works. This creates a dynamic linkage of networks among different view points and this nonlinear strategy creates different and new cultural perspectives that may not have existed before.

Journal of Memories
Journal of Memories will deal with the main important topics for the Sixth College practicum project, which are culture, art and technology. A fictional character will be created through plagiarizing and utilizing content from the World Wide Web, mainly from online blogs. My project will deal with identity theft and how personal material available online is vulnerable and is sometimes stolen as well as manipulated by some individuals. At the same time, a new type of art form is born through this process which makes it something of a paradox. It is my observation that people are becoming less able to extract themselves from the virtual culture that we are emerging into. We are, in effect, becoming one with it.

History of fabricated identities by other artists
There are a few artists that utilize the fabrication of identities, such as Lynn Hershman, Mouchette, and The Yes Men. I would like to research their different approaches to a similar art process, while I create my piece in order to study and be able to better understand fabricated characters in depth.

Lynn Hershman- A media artist created a character named Roberta Breitmore, whom she acted out on a daily basis and was, in effect, interwoven with her own life. This, in turn, blurred the line between fiction and reality. She was one of the first artists who analyzed fabricated identities through her performance. Most of her work deals with “identity, reality and truth.”


Mouchette.org- A website dedicated to a character based on the French film, “Mouchette”, released in 1967. There is a quiz on the site that compares the Mouchette in the virtual setting to the one in the film. The website was censored because of copyright issues. Interestingly enough on recently developed social networking sites, there are more virtual bodies that fabricate, assume or even go so far as to steal identities.

The Yes Men- Culture jamming activists impersonate powerful people in order to alter their identities. These impersonators pose questions to individuals about what needs to be thought through more thoroughly in our modern society. The two main people in this organization are Andy Birchlbaum and Mike Bonanno, who recently created The Yes Men documentary which both explains and displays what they do.

CULTURE/ART/TECHNOLOGY
In a technologically advanced society, we have become interested in the “new” identity theft because it is something different. The bizarre trend of an unknown person in a virtual setting sharing their personal lives for the online public to view is becoming a common occurrence. These individuals may be fabricating the information they are disseminating although it is difficult to confirm what is factual and what isn’t. Therefore we need to be skeptical when viewing the majority of online material. Fake identities of celebrities and individuals are created on virtual communities such as Myspace, Youtube, and other websites on a daily basis. In addition, we are able to obtain false information through “news” sites, such as The Onion. Journal of Memories will reflect on this unique virtual community that is emerging in our modern society.


B. Goals, including justification for doing the project
The internet phenomenon has triggered my inspiration to go back to the traditional way where individuals kept hand written journals, and often kept them secret from everyone else. Journal of Memories will become a personal journal that belongs to a fabricated character, which will reveal things that happened in people’s lives. In my opinion each and every individual has an interesting story to tell, but most of the time others do not have the time to listen to them. The majority of people go through life learning from experiences and gaining knowledge through mistakes they have made (we hope). My intention for this piece is to show what a fabricated character learned from events that happened in his/her life, which makes up his/her personality. I would like to provide a collective plagiarized journal of a fabricated character based on true events that will eventually be shared to the public.

Push and pull relationships
The fabricated character would need to experience life and create a push and pull relationship with other people. It is necessary for this character to utilize the push strategy, such as joining social networks and providing information to virtual bodies. Moreover, create an e-mail and instant messenger account where others are provided with the opportunity to contact this fabricated character. It will become very crucial for me to know what type of friends this character will be forming and pulling in. The character would need to have a unique name so that others who are interested are able to google for more information. The character will leave a "search engine footprint" in the virtual space. Another thing I plan to incorporate is creating pen pals once more people are interested, I would like to add a traditional mode of communication such as snail mail. This character will be utilizing traditional mediums and technology in order to reach out to others as well as being reached.

Time Table
Winter Break ~ Winter Quarter
Week 1 (December 11th~17th): Character development (naming, clothing, personality, likes, dislikes, etc.), reading online blogs, joining social networking sites, website creation of the fabricated character profile, and start posting.
Week 2 (December 18th~24th): Video development planning/editing, posting.
Week 3 (December 25th~31st): Video development planning/editing., posting.
Week 4 (January 1st~7th): Journal writing, plagiarizing and then posting. Chatting, creating networks and email lists. Create a PO Box for character once pen pals are established.
Week 5 (January 8th~14th): Documentation of fabricated character and people who are involved, collect receipts of what the character would have bought.
Week 6 (January 15th~21st): Video development/editing.
Week 7 (January 22nd~28th): Journal writing, plagiarizing, posting, and chatting.
Week 8 (January 29th~ February 4th): Traveling outside as the character. Documentation of what the character did by taking photographs.
Week 9 (February 5th~February 11th): Documentation of fabricated character and people who are involved.
Week 10 (February 12th~February 18th): Video development/editing, posting.
Week 11 (February 19th~ February 25th): Journal writing, plagiarizing, posting. Intertwine people in journals who the character meets on social network sites or in real life.
Week 12 (February 26th~March 4th): Documentation of fabricated character and people who are involved. Draw some of the people who may have changed the character.
Week 13 (March 5th~March 11th): More documentation.
Week 14 (March 12th~March 18th): Video development/editing.
Finals Week (March 19th~March 25th): Start writing an analysis on the character and how it expanded for next quarter; perhaps plan on revealing that it was a senior project on a separate website.

C. Design of the project, including proposed activities, rationale for choosing those activities, basic time table.
Minimum of 3 hours a day will be dedicated to creating my Practicum Project during the Winter Quarter, 2007. I will plan to have meetings with my faculty advisor, Brett Stalbaum at least once a week. In addition, the following Spring Quarter of 2007, a website will be created that will be dedicated to documenting the nonlinear strategy of this project.

D. If applicable, information about the team working on the project, including contact information for each team member
N/A

E. Description of the community group-if any-you will be working with
Online blog communities, social networking websites (myspace, youtube, rhizome.org, etc.).

F. Necessary permissions from those who will be impacted by the proposed activities
N/A


Reference

University of California, San Diego, Sixth College. “TritonLink Preview: Sixth College: About the Practicum.” Sixth College: About the Practicum. 2006. 8 December 2006 .

Lynn Hershman. "The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson." Roberta Breitmore, 1974-1978. Date of publication unknown. 26 October 2006 .

Mouchette. "*MOUCHETTE*."*MOUCHETTE*. Date of publication unknown. 26 October 2006 .

The Yes Men. "The Yes Men." The Yes Men. Date of publication unknown. 26 October 2006.