I Know Where You Tweeted Last Summer
Claire O'Neill
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 12:33 PM
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#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe I Only Ask For Honesty, Commitment &Respect . Be The Person U Wud Want Your Daughter To Be With .

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe I Only Ask For Honesty, Commitment &Respect . Be The Person U Wud Want Your Daughter To Be With .

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman


Ever get that odd sensation that someone's watching you? Well, if you're online, someone always kind of is. Conceptual artists Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman are exploring that idea in photographs.

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe b a poligamist

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe b a poligamist

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe be willing to do out of the spur things and be down all the time for whatever

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe be willing to do out of the spur things and be down all the time for whatever

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe don't hide our relationship

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe don't hide our relationship

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe just be honest

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe just be honest

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe Understand me when I can't explain and just be there for me

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe Understand me when I can't explain and just be there for me

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe Make me feel like I make you happy

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe Make me feel like I make you happy

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe Everything You Say Emotionally You Have To Mean It &Make Sure I'm Happy & Your Happy With Me

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe Everything You Say Emotionally You Have To Mean It &Make Sure I'm Happy & Your Happy With Me

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe be a man of your word and no games

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe be a man of your word and no games

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe respect me

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe respect me

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe Spontaneity is law

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe Spontaneity is law

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe swallow....

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe swallow....

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe tell me not twitter

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe tell me not twitter

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe love hockey as much as i do or atleast pretend too n understand the dream is top priority

#HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe love hockey as much as i do or atleast pretend too n understand the dream is top priority

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

I Know Where You Tweeted Last Summer

I Know Where You Tweeted Last Summer

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

"These tweets have my location?"

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

"Sometimes I feel like somebody's watchin me"

Couresy of Larson & Shindelman

"Pretty sure I just heard a gun shot lol"

Courtesy of Larson & Shindelman

Ever get that odd sensation that someone's watching you? Well, if you're online, someone always kind of is.

There's that old caveat: Never say anything you wouldn't want published in The New York Times. And though we all understand the concept, we go on tweeting, Instagramming, blogging, pushing our personal data into the universe without really knowing how it might one day be used.

That idea is curious to conceptual artists Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman. So here's what they do: They troll Twitter for trending topics in specific locations. They then find the physical location where a tweet was published, and photograph that location after the fact.

Yes, your tweets contain geolocation information. And for Larson and Shindelman, the artistic decision to leave people out of the photograph is intentional. The idea, Larson explains, is to meditate on the thought behind the words — by seeing what the person might have seen when they hit "tweet."

"Twitter has over 350 million posts a day, and we see ourselves as archivists, pulling down and preserving a small fragment of them that would otherwise be lost to the vastness of the Internet," he continues. "Our photographs anchor the post to a place — this happened here, someone felt this here, this was experienced here."

Recently, Larson and Shindelman have been exploring hashtags. The reason certain hashtags start to trend is a separate conversation — but one that was trending in New York City this past July, Shindelman says, was #HowToKeepARelationshipWithMe. Larson and Shindelman monitored the chatter and picked a few interesting ones to "photograph."

Similar projects have been done in the past: Joel Sternfeld's ostensibly ordinary landscapes, in his series On This Site, actually mark the sites of violent crimes and accidents. (A more recent take is Stephen Chalmers' Unmarked series.) But Larson and Shindelman add another layer. Their idea is to reintroduce digital abstractions to the physical space where they were made.

"There is a digital noise surrounding us, invisible chatter, and we spend time listening to this in each city we travel through," writes Larson. "These photographs serve as a means of memorializing these brief virtual moments."

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.


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