With project due on Monday for the gallery space, I figured I’d write about my project here thus far…especially since our class will be doing process books soon.

Since I came across the spending data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Expenditure Survey, I wanted to find an effective way of displaying that data that would also have an impact on who ever is viewing. Of course, I wanted to involved my receipt printer in my project as well because receipts are obviously hand-in-hand with spending. I printed variations of icons that represent what my age group spent their money on. I even made a comparison of what it costs to go to UConn for 4 years versus my peer’s first expected year of salary (just to see if that would lead me anywhere).

One of my big receipts was a hella-long roll that had icons (one icon=one dollar) from the various categories arranged from what we spend most on to what we spend the least on. Housing took up a huge part of the receipt while books took up the least…I then took that idea of categorizing and tried to find ways I could effectively demonstrate those comparisons…even trying to turn the icon-receipts into booklets. Needless to say, it wasn’t effective.

I think my project finally started to make sense when I began using crank-like forms. This allowed for viewers to scroll through the receipts (since they’re all long rolls). I tried to do a roll by roll comparison by having multiple rolls roll with each other. The idea would be that one could scroll through the longs rolls of receipts backwards and forwards. Unfortunately, that didn’t work because the rolls were too long and too light. They wouldn’t roll evenly at the same time with one another.

After that trial, I knew that if the receipts were going to scroll, they would be more effective rolling in one direction. After talking to some classmates about my project and what I was trying to convey, Alon said something that made my project make sense to me (and these forms as well). Receipts (and money) are like toilet paper, WE USE MORE THAN WE NEED TO. After that awe-inspiring moment, it was then that I decided to make dispenser forms. These dispensers would dispense receipts and, after it was suggested by Mark, these receipts’ lengths would be proportionate to the amount of spending done in particular categories (originally I would just print out a number of receipts proportionate to the amounts and they would all be the same length).

My project’s developed from there. Making just the right dispensers and figuring out the mechanics of it has been an entire process all in itself (Edvin totally gave me good advice on that end). So right now, the finished project will resemble an inverted bar-graph (and the inverted part makes sense since I’m displaying spending). The dispensers themselves will be able to dispense receipts easily and the receipts themselves will be two different ideas/designs/messages that alternate with one another.

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So yeah, that’s how things have been so far…it’s funny that my project, which started out with me making websites to catalog my own spending, has turned into something so analogue and…peculiar? It just took the form it had to take.