July 2, 2004, Seattle, Washington
I chose a phrase, INFORMATION OVERLORD, that I kept secret for the duration of the project, and constructed the phrase by sewing together large letters from leftover plastic packaging.
I selected seven locations throughout the city that would be highly visible to people coming into the city during rush hour: Aurora overpass at 42nd St. (facing southbound traffic) (ON) The 520 overpass at MOHAI/Montlake (facing westbound traffic) (LORD) The pedestrian over- pass on Fauntleroy Way (facing northbound traffic) (I) The I-5 overpass at Madison St. (facing northbound traffic) (IN) The Central Library (FORM) The University Street station of the downtown bus tunnel (south mezzanine) (OVER) The Dravus overpass at 15th Ave. (facing southbound traffic) (AT)
The message was displayed in fragments through- out the city from 7 - 8:30 AM on Friday, July 2. A crew of volunteers – none of which knew the full message - displayed it and documented the project. This piece is an obscure, sideways comment on transmission and obfuscation of information - how we get it, where it comes from, how it's conveyed, and whether we even notice it when it's right in front of us. Our limited perspectives privilege us to only the tiniest bits of information, forcing us to try to make sense out of a scattering of random data points. For this project I put myself in a position of having control over who had access to what information.
Throughout the construction of the piece, although I told people I was working on a secret project,' I kept the message a secret. The participants who helped me hang the piece throughout the city were crucial, not only in their participation, but in their ignorance. In addition to not knowing the entire message, the participants were given very limited instructions, and were told not to communicate with each other. Anyone coming into the city this morning who saw the various pieces of the message may not even have noticed or interpreted it as a message, and if they did, it was almost impossible to see enough pieces of the message to decipher it or understand its fuller context.
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