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Marie-Christiane Mathieu had written about my Tongue Rug project way back in 2003 in an article for Espace Sculpture: Œuvres en processus pour publics en développement. I had presented the very beginnings of the project during the Forum des Nouvelles Écritures: Cyberpitch 2.0 at the Festival International Nouveau Cinéma Nouveaux Médias.
Reading the article now, I am struck by my naiveté and my over ambition. I did not have a proper sense of the scope of the project — in terms of physical territory — until I cycled to each of the waypoints spread-out all over Quebec. My project was also not very realistic in terms of time management. I had wanted to interview people in the general area of each body of water; reach out to communities by putting up posters and placing ads. It turned out to be a logistical nightmare because I was sometimes cycling more than 100 km a day. I would arrive late in the day to my campsite, hostel or B&B, tired and needing food. The first few posters I did post around town, community bulletin boards in grocery stores for the most part, were water-soaked and wrinkled from my travels. I did not receive any responses.
At other times the waypoints were remote and there were no proper towns or villages to speak of where I could try and connect with local populations. I eventually came to the conclusion that the people who might have stories about these lakes and rivers did not necessarily live nearby. There was likely others like myself who would travel to these bodies of water for various reasons: cottages, fishing or hunting trips, camping, etc. I didn’t have the time or the budget to stay more than a day or two at each location. But this was all good. I simply adjusted my project. I put the interactive aspect aside to focus on my cycling trips, where I sought instead the chance encounter, those haphazard meetings beyond my control.
Though the Tongue Rug project did stretch out over the years — deservedly so considering the kilometers I had to cover — in the end, it was like I was secretly waiting for all these social media tools to be launched onto the scene. While I do work in the Web field, I was not one of the early adopters when it came to blogging though I did try my hand at wikis and social networks. I did create a Twitter account, but it was inactive. I had not yet decided on how I wanted to use it. I only knew that the modular aspect of the Tongue Rug and the bite-size tweets seemed to be an obvious pairing.
It was when working on a few contracts for Metropolis Blue’s Educational Programmes that I was able to explore further. Developing the lesson planning for VOISINS-NEIGHBOURS, I quickly realized that the blog was the perfect tool to archive and structure my work process/progress. Likewise, working on the pedagogical guide for Tweet Pals – Twitosphère, I started seeing the creative applications of Twitter through my research into Twitterature: I was inspired by the activities of the Institut de twittérature comparée (ITC) and the viral nature of Tim Burton’s cadavre exquis. I also liked the way Twitter feeds could be embedded into websites to be used as a commenting tool, such as Daniel Canty’s Le tableau des départs. Twitter seemed to be the ideal application to network with a widespread community on specific topics. Microblogging provides another way to solicit feedback other than the web form or the commenting feature of the blog.
The blog mimics the idea of the Tongue Rug itself: the parceled narratives of the blog posts, tags and tweets (tongues) within the larger structure of the websphere (tongue rug). If the blog (tongue rug) can be fragmented into tags (tongues); the Twitter feed @tonguerug can be broken down into #hashtags (tongues). The blog post, the tweet, the YouTube video, the GoogleMap — all modular bits spread-out over the web — are re-assembled in the website.
Re-constituted as well through search engine activity because the Tongue Rug exists outside my website. I rather enjoy the idea that people can stumble on these “tongues” through associated search terms. Each tongue becomes a different entry point to the project; each tongue has the potential to engage people in conversation. No longer a physical object in the parlour, the idea of the tongue rug plays out in the twittersphere, the blogosphere, the websphere.
Tongue rug: A rug made out of fabric that was once part of the social fabric in a physical space. Social networks now often take place in a virtual space through social media applications. How have the more traditional face-to-face conversations in the Parlour Room changed with this shift? What have we gained, what did we lose?
Mathieu described the tongue rug as a latent object, taking form by way of the participation of a larger public who can become both co-author and witness to the piece. She did get a good sense of the project in her article. Though my process may have changed, the core ideas remain. The paths I have taken to each waypoint — the re-routes, the circling-back and the dead-end — have all been loosened from the map. They have become drawings and embroidery on the landscape itself; they have taken the form of associative threads (links) in a larger, somewhat ethereal, social fabric — a virtual sladdakavring.
