Archive for April, 2010

Mail Art – A Cup in the Mail

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

2 ladies from the US, Betsy and Aline, answered my call to exchange cups in the mail. As you remember, we will each attempt to send an unwrapped cup in the mail. All postage and address details will be written or glued to the cup itself.

Here are the requirements of the swap as published on Swap-bot:

“Pick a cup and decorate it. Put a stamp, and don’t forget to leave a place for the address. You do not, I repeat, DO NOT wrap it. You stick what ever postage needed straight on the cup (or maybe in it), and write the address on it. Document the final project and the process of sending the cup. The documentation is for in case the cup will not arrive, as this is a risky swap. If you do not get your cup, contact your partner and they will send you the documentation. We will not give rating of 1 on this swap, as too much hang on the post people. Be ready to the option that you will not get a cup, and might end with just the pictures sent be Email.

You may wrap your cup only in the event that the post office clerk will not agree to accept it, and I would suggest you try sending it from another branch first. Try to document this as well.”

I started by going to the post office to find out what size of stickers will be used, to make sure I leave enough space for the stickers, and how much space do I have left empty for the address and any decorating I want to make.

Then I decided a tall cup will be the best choice. Here it is with all the stickers that I got from the post office:

cup1

After writing the address and putting the stickers on, there was a very small space left. I draw on it this small mailman bringing a cup:

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Fabian, the nice guy at my local post shop charged me $13.5 to send the cup, and while I was taking a picture his supervisor went by to tell me I cannot send it like this, as it might brake and hurt someone, or damage other mail items.  My payment was refunded, and I took the cup and tried my luck in a second post shop, just to get the same answer.

cup3

And as I was taking a picture of the post shop entrance for the documentation, a security guard approached me and asked me not to take any photos within the mall. However, she had a look at the one I took and said it is fine, and that I do not need to delete it.

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After that I bought a yummy cake, and decided that instead of giving up and wrapping my cup, I will start again, but this time with a plastic cup.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted (no pun intended) on my progress.

D.

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Posted in Outgoing |

Inverted Commas:

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

To write a good love letter you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Posted in Incoming |

recieving a letter – a sketch by Richard Watkins

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

After blogging about him yesterday, Richard Watkins sent me a link to one of his sketches.

I asked him if he will allow me to put it here on my blog, and he did.

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If you’ll visit his site you can read the comment that was left on this sketch, which I very much agree with.

D.

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Posted in Incoming |

Real Life Bloggong

Monday, April 12th, 2010

In his blog Pen Paper Pause – Sketched Thought, which I found thanks to Lisa from Lucky Dip, Richard Watkins writes about his physical blog in which he put up his sketches in real places and update them once a week.

What are the differences between blogging and letter writing? Beside the obvious speed and distribution, I think in blogging we are losing some of the intimacy of letter writing.

Not only we are losing the hand writing, but the personal and private notion that this is a text meant to be shared by two specific people.

Although blogging still represent the thoughts and experience of its writer, it is written with the knowledge that it will be read by many people, and is not directed to a specific person, as we will not write the same letter to two different people and will not use the same subjects and language.

The blog is more like a letter in a bottle, we cannot be sure who will find it and what they will do with it. Good thing we are not on a deserted island, although, sitting in front of the computer might fill like that sometimes.

After saying all this, I cannot ignore the benefits of blogging, hey, I’m blogging right now.

So I started thinking of Richard’s way of bringing blogging and real communication closer. Although he dose not know who reads his post, he knows at least where they are read. And the reader can check his newly hand drawn illustration, or at least “hand copied” and personally hanged.

And then I started seeing it around me in other forms and formats.

Here is a “Real Life Blog” I saw when visiting on a farm house in Karamea, NZ:

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“Posts” were scattered  around the house:

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Here is another real life blog:

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This notebook is located at the beginning of Mt. Somers track (South  Island, NZ). Trackers write down when they left and there route so there will be some way of finding out if someone is missing. “Double click” on the cover will uncover posts with dates and names of travelers, impressions and recommendations, and also a post about a lost camera.

And last, but not least, the old and familiar family blog:

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The fridge door.

D.

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Posted in Mail, Outgoing |

Mail Art

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

Wikipedia describe Mail Art like this: “Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium. The term mail art can refer to an individual message, the medium through which it is sent, or an artistic genre.”

I separate Mail Art into two categories: Art sent by mail, and the art of sending mail.

The first one is pretty self explanatory, so I would like to concentrate on the second one.

What exactly dose it mean “the art of sending mail”? Well, it could be art related, like sending a letter in a decorated hand made envelope, creating fake postage, sending a hand made postcard, maybe an altered CD made into a postcard, but it can also be about pushing the boundaries of what you can send by mail.

Obviously I’m not talking about size, but about content and shape, or rather the combination of the two of them. John Windsor is telling of his experience with mail art, that includes receiving day to day unwrapped objects in the mail, including an orange, a lemon, a coat hanger, an egg, chopsticks and some time traveling tickets among other things.
This all sounds very exciting, I decided I must try it myself. So I started a swap of my own on swap-bot. In this swap I invited people to join me in swapping decorated unwrapped cups in the mail. Notice I added the “decorated”, this way I cover both Mail Art categories.
There are still a few days to sign to this swap, and you are all welcome to join me in this experiment.
I’ll be sure to keep you posted on it’s results.
D.
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Posted in Mail, Outgoing |