welcome to wordsworth!
artist's statement...
you've heard it before:
"a picture is worth a thousand words."
bullshit.
words are extremely valuable.
the right word can be more powerful than most pictures.
and a thousand words can be more valuable than any picture.
to show the value and power of words,
i am creating a piece of art that will consist of 1,000 words.
the project is code-named "wordsworth", which is short for
"a thousand words worth more than any picture".
i could choose 1,000 words myself to make up the list, but
that wouldn't really mean very much, for several reasons.
first, other people might disagree with many of my choices.
even more importantly, i wouldn't have "paid a price" for the words,
so the only indication of their value would be my subjective judgement.
so instead, i have decided to have the list constructed by the public,
with the value of each word demonstrated in a concrete way --
with cold hard cash.
anyone can put a word on "wordsworth".
all you have to do is buy a slot on the list for your word.
for instance, if you think "love" is a word that should be on the list,
you would simply buy a slot for it.
("love" is already taken, but you get the idea.)
initially, a slot costs $1.
when you put a word on the list, you are the "owner" of that word.
it is also possible to "buy out" a word that's already on the list.
for example, my friend rod smear purchased the word "curves".
(rod is a super-cool musician who lives here in southern california.)
if you wanted to be the owner of "curves", you could out-bid rod by
doubling the price he had paid for it. since rod paid $1 for the word,
you would offer $2 for it. rod then has the right to match your offer;
if he does, he retains the word; if he doesn't, he loses the word and
you become the new owner of "curves". either way, "curves" would then
be worth $2; so someone who wanted to buy it later would have to offer $4.
in other words, if you want to retain "ownership" of your word on the list,
you've got to defend it against other people bidding more for the word.
however, in the case that you do lose ownership of a word,
the money you paid for the word will be returned to you.
so, if you offer $2 for "curves", and rod declines to match your offer,
he will get his original $1 back.
how many other pieces of art give you a money-back guarantee?
wordsworth -- and the list itself -- is a conceptual entity,
but it will have a number of physical manifestations.
for instance, it will be presented as a page on this website.
it will also be packaged as a standalone executeable
multi-media computer-based presentation, and
will also be printed on paper in a multitude of forms.
many of these physical manifestations of the list will include
information about each word's history within "wordsworth",
such as the "owner", the date of entry on the list, and so forth.
in this way, the history of the art-piece (i.e., its "provenance")
will become an integral part of the piece itself.
as time goes on, i'll provide more extensive documentation here
describing wordsworth and its evolution, but that's enough for now.
if you want to add a word to the list and become a part of this piece of art,
or if you just want to view the list of words, click one of the links below.
feel free to tell others about this project, and to link to this page.
if you have any questions, just e-mail me using the link below.
word.
bowerbird intelligentlemanadd your own word to the list of words in wordsworth...
e-mail the artist