“Interactions” was the theme for this week. I decided I’d collect smiles. Initially I thought I’d challenge myself by collecting smiles from people I don’t know, in the street. I totally chickened out of that one, well, I collected two that way, half-smiles. I found I managed to connect with strangers most genuinely at a Polar Bear gig which blew my head off, their set crashed through my barriers. This exercise made me realise however that smiles are not as straight forward as I thought, we can deliver them at will, they have currency, so when are they real, what do they hide, reveal? How could I collect smiles unseen, social media smiles, audio smiles? Actually one of the biggest surprises is that you can you can hear a smile. I also added a couple of categories which remained empty, what do we seek from people and not find?

 

The list of categories (so far) is as follows: service smiles, social media smiles, blue smiles, marathon smiles, audio smiles, self-help smiles, Polar Bear smiles, smiling at strangers, swimathon smiles, smiles from my boss, fuck-me smiles, transparent smiles, senior smiles, botox smiles. Clearly I haven't yet collected all of the above, but I live in hope.