Today I had a very interesting conversation about place, and the ways in which I'm starting to approach the idea. The observation was made that a lot of my work deals not just with the sense of place, but in using my projects to transcend place.

This struck me as accurate, and its making me go back and look at my existing and proposed projects in a new light.

Take, for example, a project I proposed for my Network Landscapes class. Its a collaboration with my mother, who is also an artist, designer and, for many years now, a successful blogger. When her mother died this summer, we were left with many (many, MANY) boxes of stuff accumulated from two or three generations of my family on that side. There are hundreds of stories and memories in these boxes, and I was frustrated that I wouldn't be a part of telling them from across the country.

So I proposed that we each take one box, and agree to unpack one item (or logical collection of items) out of each box each day for two weeks. My project is to create a tool that allows each of us to post a photograph of each days findings, and to start a collective dialogue about the historical narrative taking place in each.

The project - the working title is Unpacked - is an exercise in unpacking our relationships to our physical space by creating a new online place that transcends either one. It will also produce a novel form of recording family history and personal narrative, and result in a portrait of my grandmother built up from her own history.