For several weeks, whenever someone asked me for a cigarette, I asked for payment in the form of one anonymous secret.
I explain that these secrets will be used in a student art installation, displayed as mock signs, and brief them on the process and intent of the project, that it’s entirely anonymous—I’ll have no way of knowing whose secret is whose.
Once the participant has given informed consent, I provide a pen and a miniature notebook, instruct the participant to take as much time as they need, and, when they’re, finished, tear out the notebook page and fold it twice, then get my attention again.
When the participant tells me they’ve finished, I let them place the paper in an envelope containing the secrets I’ve accumulated thus far*, which I don’t open until I’ve completed this collection process.
(on two occasions I had forgotten to bring the envelope and requested that the participant put the secret in my change purse, giving (and keeping) my word that I would put it in the envelope as soon as I returned home without looking at it.)
During these weeks, I was simultaneously researching and analyzing types of signs in public spaces:
Signs in public spaces tend to serve one of three purposes: directing (i.e. street signs), warning (i.e. construction area signs), and advertising. I focused on the former two, which have more regulated formats and are therefore easier to emulate. All of the signs I worked with used typefaces in the Highway Gothic and Helvetica families. The most common colors were (after white and black) red, green, and neon yellow/orange. Most signs used a border system with a 1-3/8” rounded rectangle stroke just 1/4-1/2” from the edge of the sign.
After collecting a significant number of secrets, I analyzed those as well: Secrets range from funny anecdotes (e.g. ”I wear thongs sometimes”) to heartbreaking confessions (e.g. “I think I permanently screwed up my daughter”).
I then made mock signs with the secrets, designed to reference existing signs in public spaces. The secrets and signs were paired based on design elements, The compatability of the sentence structure in the secret and the heirarchy of copy in the existing sign largely dictated these decisions. Penultimately, I replaced the mock signs into public next to or in place of the signs they reference and photographed them. Finally, I displaced these images and the signs into private, namely the site of my installation
