Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Public School Desks






Desk top graffiti has been recognized by psychologists and sociologists, still the information on content remains hidden. Inner city high school in the southeastern part of the United States have found that 90% of desks have graffiti on them. In a shape that both mimics an artist's palette and a comic's speech bubble, communication is shared between classmates, yet done away from classmates. With prohibition giving room to anonymity a muted sense of color grows even more louder, and invisibly prohibited, so to speak. Pens, pencils, and markers live in these colorless palettes, exposing nickname, general remarks, random drawings, and mathematical operations. As another form of communication, color centers itself in between anonymity and muted sense, matching itself with content, thus creating feeling to surface. Inside-out these collaborative layers of content, reveals sexuality, self identity and boredom. Hiding underneath, gum, along with its colors, plays a symbolic role exhibiting both the prohibited and the unprohibited.