Sunday, October 16, 2005

Last year

it was handmade greetings cards. Now her room is filled with glassware, paints, beads, pictures and ribbon. She nests in amongst it all, sitting on a beanbag with her laptop on her lap. It is all very cosy in my daughter Rosa's space.

These are a few examples of her work:

Rosa-bottles1

Notice the colour matching and the beads all thread in a style to match. The pictures are found on the Internet, printed, carefully cut and pasted.

Rosa bottles

The nineteen-twenties have been an interest - and note how there is a poem on the background here:

twenties girls

Whilst here is a just a line from a poem ...

fairyjar

This one has a Japanese theme:

japanese-jar

and as in the last little display with the miniature bamboo plant, the finished pieces are put together in R's bedroom with other artifacts that have a similar theme:

I believe in fairies

The glassware is displayed around her room in little groups, each with appropriate other artifacts - e.g in a magical/fantasy genre/ Japanese or nineteen twenties. A commonly used icon across all themes though is the wings which are given to many of the characters. They are all carefully selected from a huge collection she has gathered from across the Internet; colour and size must match the character. They are all angels or fairies.

I think it is interesting the way we create backdrops for ourselves; we often fill our spaces with artifacts that seem to set the scene in particular ways, as if our world is a stage set that has to present a consistent and particular message. This is, I think what Goffman was getting at in his work 'Presentation of self in everyday life.'

Maybe when people get irritated with a mess in their spaces, they are nervous that the backdrop is creating the wrong presentation; yet there are those who like to live in mess. This is might come from a desire to resist one particular 'reading' of the self - ! /em>Or maybe even a desire to mislead!!

Of course blogs offer possibilities for presenting identities to others, exploiting the public/private affordances of online spaces ...
Stern (1999) has compared girls’ homepages to their bedroom walls where self-expression and public presentation come together as textual constructions of self. Yet these are complex textual constructions which reflect tensions across multiple selves, showing what


in some way the selves girls think they are, the selves they wish to become, and most likely, the selves they wish others to see


(Stern, 1999:24)

I know that in writing my blog I present a particular self and have a particular range of themes. As I write I tend to think I am showing a 'real me' whatever that means; I think I mean that I am not aware of the type of identity I am presenting; it seems to be the same as the me elsewhere, but I do not really believe this can be so. The medium always changes the message. The blog just poses as a window onto my world but it is a filter.

I love to write my blog and feel disappointed when I cannot get to it everyday. I think it is not that I am egocentric (although I may be) but that I have created a space for myself and I can make it whatever space I want. People share it with me and I like that; I can bring to, bits of my life, turn things round and present them and re-present them in different ways to help me think.


5 comments:

Gareth said...

Interesting post DrJ. 'The medium always changes the message' - too true. But in this media literate age, maybe your readers piece together messages across different media

Now I'm really in trouble!

Anonymous said...

Oooh. The colours are all crazy! Rosa x

Rob Burton said...

I suppose the next question has to be why do we feel the need to have 'shrines'?

Mary Plain said...

I think the idea of creating windows into our worlds is very interesting when we juxtapose the ways that we do this with our 'real' environment and with our blogs. Rosa's work here reminds me so much of the way I do the same with the spaces in my house and with my office as well as with my blog. And in both cases I love it when people visit.

Joolz said...

Comment from Julia

Literally eleventh time of trying to reply ... Blogger playing up today it seems. Have now switched everything off and will start again ….
Sorry Rosa I agree, the colours are a bit weird. I think it is a combination of the red room a flash light and being dark outside. Dunno.
Shrines .. yes I have one in my office. Lots of popular culture bits that I take care of. I think I hope it makes me people think I am fun or something; or take popular culture seriously. Someone told me ' I know that you are being ironic with all this stuff Julia.' But I am not, I am serious. Jackie asked if she could take my Bratz doll out if the packet and I said no!! How sad is that? A shrine indeed!
I am looking forward to seeing Molly's stuff on the blog.

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Sheffield, South Yorks, United Kingdom
I am an academic interested in New Literacies, Digital Lifestyles, Informal Online Learning.