Authorship is often defined as the occupation of writing as well as being the creator of a piece of work. With that in mind, I became even more interested in my favorite weekly blog/community art project, Post Secret created by Frank Warren. While the whole idea of Post Secret is for people to mail their secrets on a post card and mail them anonymously to Frank Warren at his home in Maryland. Frank Warren has published four books full of secrets since the project started and has a fifth book coming out in October 2009. The main topic of my research project will be Post Secret, an analytical view of the popular ongoing art project.
I found it to be intriguing that Frank Warren simply compiles other people’s anonymous secrets and has created them in not only blog and book form but events that people buy tickets for as well. I plan to take this research finding out how it works with anonymous work and authorship – who really deserves the recognition? I will research whether or not authorship and plagiarism has been an issue thus far for him. These secrets are posted on his weekly blog: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ as well as his twitter: http://twitter.com/postsecret keeping fans up to date in between book releases. I am interested in learning more about the process of this project, its effect on readers and avid followers, as well as how Post Secret rethinks authorship itself.
While beginning my research of the infamous community art project, I came across another community art project: www.foundmagazine.com. This project does not post stranger’s secrets but posts things such as letters that never got to the recipients, promotional flyers, to-do lists, and photographs – anything that allows you to become somewhat involved in someone else’s life. This project not only has a website but magazine issues that are for sale featuring the most interesting found items. I think that Found Magazine will be a good comparison to Post Secret, a look at a different spin on annonymous art.
Both of these publications are great examples of anonymous authorship, which will be the basis of my research. I am most interested in seeing the effect these anonymous authors have on other people. This project should be a great way to understand the fine lines of what is and is not seen as plagiarism.
Many of the bookmarks I have found and posted on our class diigo site have been a great help in getting my ideas together. I plan on using a number of these sites while constructing my actual research paper. www.postsecretarchive.com
3 comments:
I think this is a great research topic, Caitlyn! I had never heard of Post Secret until this class, and even more so had never heard of Found Magazine. I really like that you are trying to investigate about anonymous authorship and who really deserves the recognition. yes of course these are other people secrets, or shopping lists, etc but does Frank Warren get to take credit for all the secrets since he was the one who bound them up in a book or put them up online? Same with Found Magazine, do the anonymous and unknown contributors get credit for the pieces of their life that were found and published or does the person who just so happened to find it and submit it get the credit? i definitely think that in your research topic you should look in to how this relates to "remixing," because in a sense that is what these people are doing.
Caitlin, this is such an interesting topic. I'm also very impressed with the amount of detail you went to for the proposal. I don't think I've ever heard of Post Secret and I know I have never heard of the Found Magazine. I would also be interested in finding out if there is some form of plagiarism going on since the secrets and found objects are anonymous.
Caitlyn,
This topic sounds very interesting. I alwas love reading the secrets posted on this website. It's amazing how much art work are in these post cards! Authorship would be hard to credit in this topic though. Some people may not want their names added to their secrets.
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