FREE to a Good Home
Conversations with a virtual friend 2023
Refection on a box of free books on a street corner.
FREE to a Good Home is an installation work using a box of free art books collaged, multi-channel video, ASMR keyboard typing, and a free association of word play.
It has now become a frequent sight to encounter boxes of “Free Books” left in front of houses, libraries, recycling centers, and on the side of roads, as people seek to modernize and clear “clutter.” There is often an aroma of mustiness, dampness, and vellichor which emanates from these books. As we progress from an analog world to one that is increasingly digital, there is a sense of loss, a failure of the senses to experience reading in a visceral way: are bound books an endangered species?
As we mourn the loss of vellichor, there is paradoxically a sense of the democratization of knowledge. Too much time on a device may be a problem for those in the United State, but in parts of the world where locating printed books and libraries may be difficult, there is nearly always a cellular signal present to connect with digital knowledge.
Bound books cannot possibly keep up with the speed in which we are fed information on the internet. Written language has expanded exponentially over the last decade, rendering many books obsolete before they even make it to print.
FREE to a Good Home is a work which includes free association and play on words with a juxtaposition of digital versus analog use of language, using ambigrams, anagrams, aptonyms, backronyms, portmanteau, contronyms, double entendre, eggcorn, oxymorons, isograms and spoonerisms
