Abandoned Love Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Apr 1 2015

Location: 

Columbus Georgia

Utilizing Tumblr, Peyton Fulford crafted Abandoned Love as a participatory art project with other users on Tumblr's social network. Asking her followers "to send phrases from their diary, text messages, and anything else they personally have written in their own words", Fulford noted how an overwhelming majority of the written responses were concerned with the theme of love. Fulford selected the "sad, more realistic phrases" that came from these responses. He then created 8 birthday party-esque banners using card stock, spray paint, and string and displayed them around Columbus' "abandoned buildings because [he] felt that they were more visually appealing and portrayed the same sort of distress and abandonment as the quotes expressed." The message of each banners is in sharp juxtaposition with its form, as Fulford chose to keep the medium of the sad messages happy and bright.
The last step in this project was for Fulford to display photography of the banners back onto Tumblr, "to share back the phrases in a different medium." His goal was "to materialize a private moment by sharing it publicly... transform[ing] the intangibility of the internet into a tangible creation that is viewable not only online but also in the real world." If offers an interesting approach of how technology can enframe emotional solidarity. Fulford "wanted this project to bring light to the actual feelings that are usually shared privately behind closed doors."

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