Project 2 | Create an Identity

Identity play can be found in nearly all cultures, from ancient to contemporary narratives in all forms (spoken word, book, movie). Identity play is one of the earliest forms of on-line artwork, and continues to be a rich area for exploration today.

What is an identity? Perhaps it is nothing more than a set of fictions that we construct to define our personae. Perhaps it is an agglomeration of memory. Perhaps it is a set of artifacts: photos, newspaper clippings, old pictures that you drew in grade school. Perhaps identity is defined by external factors to which you relate or record yourself: your bookmarks file, your browser history, your myspace friends network, your cell phone contents, your iPod playlists, your closet contents.

Develop, propagate and perform a fictitous identity.

• create myspace page(s), deviantArt pages, facebook pages, or other personal homepages as appropriate
• Establish a system of communication for the fictitious identity, emails, phone numbers, fax numbers, business cards, IM addresses
• Interact with other people on-line as the ficitious identity
• Interact with people proximately (in real space) as the fictitious identity

Document the creation, communications and interaction of the fictitious identity. The more elaborate the better.

The identity should be complete and active by February 28th.

Compiled documentation is due March 6th.

This project will be graded on the overall success of the identity, experimentation and elaborateness in the means of propagation, the quality of the documentation of the performance/execution.