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Description of the Site (contents, concept, technical
development) continued |
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I used the Larkin Building (1904), designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with
inscriptions by William Heath, as the basic structure for my
story/site. The inscriptions overlooking the central working space of
the building take the form of one-word mottoes, grouped three to a
panel and intended to be sequential in meaning. They extol selected
virtues in a way that permits "independence of thought and
individuality of interpretation," according to the office manager
William Heath, who chose the words. There are fourteen such panels
lining the central Light court at the fifth floor level. As Jack
Quinan notes in his book, "Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building: Myth
and Fact," Wright and the Larkins sought to create a transcendental
atmosphere, one which would have a spiritual effect on its occupants.
It is in these "male" words both in their placement in the workplace of a soap mail-order company and the way they surround women workers called "typewriters" that I see a connection to my life. Since 1977 I have been making art with computers whose software and hardware is almost exclusively male-designed. My life is surrounded and constricted by male language, male law, male religion, etc.. I use these fourteen sets of words as the names for each of the fourteen rooms that the visitor to my web site can enter. The "doors" to the rooms are positioned in what I call the LOBBY and are similar to their original structure and position in the central light court of the Larkin building. The 3rd Person web site is a place I explore the female/male dance in the dark humor of the everyday inferno of life. |
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Larkin Building (1904). Frank Lloyd Wright, architect; William Heath, inscriptions |
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