I was intrigued to hear about a book where the author (artist and writer Kate Bingham Burt) undertakes to document through drawing her daily purchases over a three year period. Obsessive Compulsion has only been recently published. I’ve not found a copy of the book yet, but Amazon states:
Our daily lives are filled with consumption—$1.50 for a cup of coffee, $5.95 for a magazine, $17.99 for headphones, $1.79 for cough drops, $36.00 for a haircut. Whether bought out of necessity or indulgence, purchased alone or in a group, everything we buy has its own story to tell. We buy art supplies while feeling inspired, CDs while shopping with friends, and a new pair of jeans to give us a lift when we are feeling blue. Yet, these powerfully emotional experiences can be fleeting—quickly erased by the pull of the next ‘must-have’ acquisition. In Obsessive Consumption, Portland-based artist Kate Bingaman-Burt holds up a mirror to her own obsession with shopping and acquisition. Faced with a mounting pile of postgraduation credit card debt, Bingaman-Burt concocted a unique artistic response to this all-too-common dilemma. She picked up a pen and began drawing her monthly credit card statements, painstakingly recreating every last ledger line and decimal point, vowing to continue serving her artistic penance until her debt was repaid. As a relief from this project—turning the idea of ‘retail therapy’ on its ear—Bingaman-Burt began drawing one of her purchases from each day, losing herself in the items, patterns, simple lines, and typography.
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In our workshops, we talk a little about discovering how much electricity your appliances and devices use, what that might be costing you and how to measure the electricity consumption in your house. Using devices like the Efergy E2, Powermate and a myriad of other devices it is relatively easy these days to ascertain which devices in your home are drawing the most electricity and when.
