MY ESTATE DOT COM

Engagement series, Mowing Strip, 2011 Plan No. 160039, Lot 12, Latitude: 147.169602 E Longitude:

Engagement series, Picturesque 2011 Plan No. 160039, Lots 52-53, Latitude: 147.167685 E Longitude:

Engagement series, Conditions Apply, 2011 Plan No. 160039, Latitude: 147.168484 E Longitude: 41.4

Engagement series, Street Light, 2011 Plan No. 160039, Lot 5, Latitude: 147.169591 E Longitude:

Engagement series, Luna Sand, 2011 Plan No. 160039, Lot 13, Latitude: 147.169442 E Longitude: 41.

Engagement series, Parking Bay, 2011 Plan No. 160039, Latitude: 147.169650 E Longitude: 41.4528

Engagement series, The Arrival, 2011 Plan No. 160039, Latitude: 147.170140 E Longitude: 41.45203

Engagement series, Cul de sac, 2011 Plan No. 160039, Latitude: 147.167689 E Longitude: 41.452212

Engagement series, Long Vision, 2011 Plan No. 160039, Lot 7, Latitude: 147.169593 E Longitude:

Occupied series, Double Garage, 2011 4 Kachina Court, Newstead, Tasmania, 7250 Latitude: 147.169572

Occupied series, Grooming, 2011 12 Kachina Court, Newstead, Tasmania, 7250 Latitude: 147.169289 E Lo

Occupied series, Looking Glass Self 2, 2011 5 Kachina Court. Newstead, Tasmania, 7250 Latitude: 147.

Occupied series, Looking Glass Self 1, 2011 3 Kachina Court, Newstead, Tasmania, 7250 Latitude: 147.

Occupied series, Front Door, 2011 3 Kachina Court, Newstead, Tasmania, 7250 Latitude: 147.169673 E L

Occupied series, Tree, 2011 3 Kachina Court, Newstead, Tasmania Latitude: 147.170118 E Longitude:

Occupied series, Satellite Shadow, 2011 3 Kachina Court Newstead Latitude: 147.169751 E Longitude:

Occupied series, Pixel Heat, 2011 2 Kachina Court, Newstead, Tasmania, 7250 Latitude: 147.169414 E L

Occupied series, Right Here, 2011 2 Kachina Court, Newstead, Tasmania, 7250 Latitude: 147.169106 E L

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Artist Statement: my estate dot com

I have been examining how new owners engage and negotiate the psychological process of purchasing vacant land within a new sub-division where the question arises: Does consumerism begin at home? Initial responses to this central question involved a thematic approach and extensive documentation of a new subdivision, Eastman’s Green in Launceston, as it went through aesthetic modification and grooming to new ownership. In the project, my estate dot com I have drawn on my own personal experience of 20 years in real estate and digital photography to record and reference new technologies.

I have been actively negotiating the current psychological, sociological and corporeal processes involved with purchasing new vacant allotments. Prior to new digital technologies, all initial engagement would have occurred at the site. Central to this inquiry is the effect of the Information Age’s use and control of the freely available virtual information on the consumer and the pivotal question of where that initial point of consumption begins.

I propose that consumerism begins in the dream /decision-making period when the consumer simulates their occupation on the allotment as they negotiate the cultural alignment of the Australian Dream of home ownership into a reality. My photographic images explore this cognitive phase as they move beyond the genre of landscape and reference the internal landscape of the prospective purchaser. In addition the use of a square format has also been used to align with cartography rather that pictorial convention associated with landscape.

The series of images my estate dot com has two distinctive groupings: Engagement and Occupation. The works on the wall titled Engagement have been taken from key psychological, sociological and aesthetic vantage points where the purchasers simulate their own impression and status management as they visualize their ownership. The long visions divulge manipulated surveyed allotments where fog has been used as a metaphor to reference the ideology and fluidity of decision-making along with the free practice of prior engagement through virtual globes, mapping, geographical and geospatial visualization information technologies.

Longitude and latitude reference points in the titling, recorded at the time of image capture, reference the virtual journey for information across a plethora of “brandscapes” that fuels desire and drives the consumers social and emotional needs. Both groupings have been displayed within an averaged sized 4 x 4 metre walled room environment from the position of capture to provide an audience with the closest simulation of my initial intent.

The Occupation series has evolved hermeneutically and has become a series of objects that occupy the floor space. Occupation’s aerial viewpoint, as if seen from a satellite also refers to a space in time a memory was recalled and a point in time when a decision or action was made. Jody Berland (1996), as cited in Sturken & Cartwright (2009, p. 394), believes satellite views of the earth produce a narrative of “this is one planet, one life, one world, one dream”. The vignetting which is present in many works has been employed to suggest a precise point where these actions occur. The floor placement provides provision for an audience to have alternative viewing points where they too can hover, rotate above, simulating the physicality of occupying a prospective home site.

The toxic green palette and signature vignette not only reference the hallmark of the suburban idiom but also reference where the desired dream of home starts, beautification begins to be a reality and place becomes a site of memory attachment and celebration. While commodities come in all forms, it is the potentiality of home that is central and visually presented in my estate dot com

References

Berland J 1996, Mapping Space: Imaging Technologies and the Planetary Body in Technoscience and Cyberculture, Routledge New York.

Sturken M & Cartwright l 2009, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford University Press, New York.

Jennifer Dickens 2011