APD Play and Objects - You Wear What You Eat

Theme: Play and Objects

Context:
I was initially thinking about doing something in the vein of The Book Ritual with participants interacting with some kind of common object and creating new purpose and meaning. I spent a while brainstorming other objects that have this kind of significance and universality. I considered CDs, DVDs and clothing. Clothing fits quite nicely as it's easy to cut up and repurpose and has strong ties to how we express who we are. Two silly ideas came to mind, the first idea is just a simple roulette game where you roll dice to pair items of clothing with parts of the body. The second idea is You Wear What You Eat, where I'd hold onto any empty food packaging that I've produced during the course of a week then at the end of the week I'd fashion all the rubbish into a wearable garment. This plays on the idea that we often use our clothing as a way of expressing our identity. On the other hand, what could we learn about someone’s personality based on the food they eat instead? So called Trashion is nothing new, gaining popularity around 2005 as a sub-genre of found object art (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSRMtLfWYs8). However, instead of using trash purely for aesthetic value, I hope to spark conversation and discovery by wearing a part of your daily life.

Method:
I saved and collected all the rubbish I produced from eating over the past week. At the end of the week I combined all the rubbish into a wearable garment. The hope is the garment might indicate certain things about my week or general lifestyle. I also took quick snippet videos of any food I cooked or ate. This process in of itself made me more considerate of the waste I was producing and what food I ate said about me.
Footage of the food, rubbish and garment were then compiled into a video that showcases a new social game for conversation starters. The premise is that you and at least one other person agree on a time frame to collect your leftover food waste. When you reach the end of the time frame, you must each build a garment out of all your rubbish. You then meet for a social gathering and observe the different things you might learn about each other through your garments.

Response:
Video Showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_rcx6MdLZU
This video showcases the rubbish I collected over the week and the resulting garment I created. I also explain the rules of You Wear What You Eat with a little montage of the kind of journey it might evoke. 

Reflection:
Although I did not love building a pile of rubbish in the corner of my room, I found this project quite lovely. I have found that a lot of people comment on the amount of rubbish but this has not been the sticking point for me personally. It has been so interesting to see how the various pieces of rubbish might come together to tell a story about my past week. The idea to turn the project into a social game came right at the end when I thought it’d be exciting to try to imagine someone's week through what they were wearing.