UnrealizedProject

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In this work inspired by Hans Ulrich Obrist’s “Manifesto for the future” I have configured a printer running on a Raspberry Pi. By automatically accessing the ECUAD wireless network to scan all Twitter status updates containing the hashtag #unrealizedProject, the device thermally prints on receipt paper the content of those tweets. This interactive printer continues to document these anonymously tweeted unrealized projects within a minute of them being published online. In doing so, it will urgently record the remembrance of roads not taken, projects not realized, and ideas not brought to fruition.

“I see unrealized projects as the most important unreported stories in the art world. As Henri Bergson showed, actual realization is only one possibility surrounded by many others that merit close attention.There are many amazing unrealized projects out there, forgotten projects, misunderstood projects, lost projects, desk-drawer projects, realizable projects, poetic-utopian dream constructs, unrealizable projects, partially realized projects, censored projects, and so on. It seems urgent to remember certain roads not taken, and—in an active and dynamic, rather than nostalgic or melancholic way—transform some of them into propositions or possibilities for the future.”

The documentation itself is ephemeral as the printing mechanism is non-additive (i.e. uses heat, not ink) serving as a metaphor for the unreachable space between ideas which have been made manifest and ideas that may not have. #unrealizedProject speaks to my personal interest in documentation, the unknowable, the forgotten, the possible, the remembered, and the alternate. serve as both an artistic tool for documentation as well as a resource from which to consider new artworks. By contesting the division between the realm of memory, experience, and the possible future, #unrelaizedProject serves as both a tool for documentation and a resource from which to consider new artworks.

“For every planned project that is carried out, hundreds of other proposals by artists, architects, designers, scientists, and other practitioners around the world stay unrealized and invisible to the public”

-Hans Ulrich Obrist