For the last few months I have been following the online blog of a girl living in Canada. Her name is Kay, she doesn’t know me and I’ve never met her. She wears size 9 shoes (UK size 7)

Installation:

Drawings:

More Photos on Flickr: Click here

Hi Kay,
I’ve been following your blog for awhile now.
As an artist I’m interested in the implication technology has on us socially.
It’s quite acceptable for people to share many details of their lives on the internet, a place that is accessible to millions of people.
What strikes me as kind of creepy about social networks is how acceptable ‘stalking’ is.
Contrary to our physical ‘offline’ life’s its quite acceptable and no one really thinks twice to ‘follow’ a stranger on a social networking site. The term follow is actually used by sites like tumblr and twitter.
I’m not quite sure what this means to us as a society. I’m pretty sure I don’t want people to follow me in my physical offline life though.
To help understand this better I wanted to try to ‘stalk’ someone through their interaction with internet sites. I’ve been looking at the information they have posted, and used search engines to research their activity further. I am aware of their facebook, myspace and flickr account and I have google street viewed their home.
This is information they have posted on the internet so I’ve not really crossed any social lines by doing this. I’ve taken it off the internet by keeping notes and drawings of information they have shared on the internet in a sketchbook.
The installation talks about social boundaries and how the use of social networks affects our understanding of these boundaries. It also addresses the obsessive nature of modern culture with social networking and they way our personalities can alter when presented online.

Kays Blog installed at FurtherField Gallery, Finsbury Park as part of Being Social

Read reviews of Being Social on Wired magazine and Enfield Independent.