“Laptop Tagging: Evolving Art in the Library” is a digital exhibit of photos taken in the library showing how students personalize their laptops to create representations of themselves.
When you enter the library you notice the multitudes of people working, studying, or collaborating. Stevens, of course, is a place where Engineering, Science, Business, etc school students are banging out equations, wrangling algorithms, mixing chemicals and devising project plans. But how do our students express their individuality?
As you walk around the library you will find students using the covers of their laptops as a canvas to celebrate their interests and express their personalities in colorful, systematic, or chaotic displays. Some collect stickers of their favorite movies or restaurants which may represent where they come from like the ubiquitous Surf Taco of South Jersey. Others sticker their laptops with organizations or teams of their school. Some even use duct tape or personalized skins.
I went around taking pictures of these collages of paper and glue and collected them for this display. It reminded me of days of drawing on notebooks and book covers of your favorite bands’ insignias or experimentations in typography.
On a more political bend to the idea of making space your own, the famous street graffiti artist Banksy credited his art as “a form of guerilla warfare. It is a way of snatching power, territory and glory from a bigger and better equipped enemy. [He] once characterised it as 'revenge.'“ From the introduction from "Banksy: You Are An Acceptable Level Of Threat".
For better or worse computers have become a part of us whether we like it or not as we carry them around in our hands or whether we sit in front of them. Maybe in a small way we are taking control of how we want to be represented.
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