Self-Evidence: blog identity

Last month I went to an exhibit at the DeCordova Museum called Self-Evidence: Identity in Contemporary Art. It was interesting to see the variety of ways that the artists depicted themselves or aspects of themselves in self-portraits. Here’s a bit from the intro (italics are my emphasis):

In this post-9/11, post-modern, and digital era, the works in Self-Evidence demonstrate that identity is complicated, unfixed, ever changing, constructed, and also unlimited. Because of the new technologies available to contemporary artists, this show not only includes photography, painting, sculpture, and works on paper, but also installation work, video, holography, digital, and Web-based art.

I’ve been thinking about blogs and identity. How much of your blog reflects you? The recent MIT Blog Survey showed some relevant data:

- the great majority of bloggers identify themselves on their sites: 55% of respondents provide their real names on their blogs; another 20% provide some variant of the real name

- 83% of respondents characterized their entries as personal ramblings whereas 20% said they mostly publish lists of useful/interesting links (respondents could check multiple options for this answer)

Although people tend to reveal themselves over time through their blog writing, there is one place that many bloggers create a self-portrait: the About Me pages. I love it when people include these because I like to get a sense of the writer, especially when I’m new to their blog. I created mine when I launched my blog habit 6 months ago, but I thought it needed an overhaul. (Perhaps my identity does, too, but that's another story.) So today I created my own new self-portrait of my “complicated, unfixed, ever changing, constructed, and also unlimited” identity. Está aquí.

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Where do you blog? Part 2.

There now. That's better.

2:07:02 PM      trackback [] 

Where do you blog?

Halley Suitt has a lovely photo of where she blogs. My space is infinitely messier. But it's home:

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