"Hello stranger"
My interest in communicating anonymously began in the pub – I always found the messages sprawled across toilet walls particularly amusing. In fact, the HobGoblin in Brighton has actually endorsed this idea by decorating the inside of their toilet doors with a blackboard and chalk tray. A great, vandal-free way of making your own drunken mark.
Another unusual example of ‘pub communication’ involves the Basketmakers Arms in the North Laines. Lining the walls of this quirky establishment are empty tobacco tins in which people can leave their own little notes or drawings, essentially allowing anyone to set up a pen-pal-type relationship with a complete stranger.
Finding hand-written messages in public places like this can be both enlightening and exciting, perhaps because a person’s anonymity makes you more intrigued as to who they are and what kind of life they lead. Beyond the pub, Found is a great source for this kind of inspiration. This is a magazine and website that collects and displays various messages that have been accidently discovered all over the world. The picture above was found tucked into an art history book in an American library.
Social networking, blogs and forums have had a remarkable effect on how we communicate information, especially with strangers. Yet projects like Found are refreshing in their ability to share information publicly whilst still creating that warm inner feeling you get from personal contact. I wonder if these anti-mass-media methods could also be used to communicate the messages the world needs to hear?
Looking at the success of a few other projects, I would suggest they probably could. Dead Drops is a public file-sharing network that sprang up in New York. The idea is that memory sticks containing selected data are cemented into a wall, building or curb, and whoever finds the USB can transfer the file to his or her laptop. The project was initiated as an offline approach to anonymous networking, but the Dead Drops website and Android app now acts as a launch-pad for the initiative, featuring a Google map tool, blog, forum and Twitter feed.
Another popular messaging experiment is The People’s Library – a platform for sharing reading material in public spaces. The idea originated when lender Collin McMullan started creating weird and wonderful library installations across the US, such as a doghouse-shaped bookshelf in Williamsburg and micro-libraries built into tree stumps across city streets. McMullan’s actions have now prompted guerrilla librarians to start lending books along sidewalks as part of Occupy Wall Street.
Finally, one of my all-time favourite collaborative messaging experiments was the 1000 Journals project, where blank journals were passed on from person to person across the world, collecting a series of doodles, diary entries or just random streams of consciousness. The first 100 journals were released in San Francisco in 2000, and in 2007 all 1000 were collated and published. The end to the 1000 Journals project brings another, more polished project – 1001 Journals, which includes a new website and further opportunities to interact with the project online.
Taking all this into account, I now believe that talking to strangers solely online, whether through forums or social networks, can sometimes neglect that unique feeling of connection and curiosity. This thought can be applied to how we interact with others on a day-to-day basis, but most importantly, how we share our message in the world of communications. By using our local environment to support a particular campaign or project, we can start to develop almost a Mexican wave of ‘chit-chat’ that will not only create a strong sense of community, but that will help to spread our message globally.
Image: © Found Magazine