LAURA MELISSA WILLIAMS
  • About
  • Art
    • Future Cities : 2100
    • Electric Connections
    • Modern Love Project
    • Public Toilet Project
    • Project Touch
    • Project Wilderness >
      • Arctic Light
    • Project skies >
      • Moon Landing
      • Pink Moon
      • Northern Lights
      • Flights of fire
    • Cities from Space
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THE   Public   toilet   project

About  The  public  toilet  project

This project seeks to explore, understand and highlight 
the role of these spaces

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Public toilets are often used and yet given little consideration.

These private spaces in public places are designed for activities such as going to the toilet and cleaning our hands, yet often provide a more important role: a few seconds of alone-time, a space for reflection or perhaps other, less salubrious acts.  


​In a world where we leave a digital footprint with almost every breath, how do these public spaces (where no accountability is in place and people can 'speak' freely) enable a different kind of expression? And how might this differ from place to place all over the world? 


The Public Toilet was designed to explore these themes. 

I am interested in what people write, how they connect through the experience and what this reveals about issues of censorship (would I censor the 'data' or leave the community to do that?) as well as t
he psychology of these private places and also how they are used and interacted with practically. ​
​Issues such as censorship and freedom of speech are interwoven into this project. 

My aim in the future is to take this concept to different geographical locations around the world and compare and contrast the data over various time periods. ​

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Method 

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​I placed paper on the back of various public toilet doors and a pot of pens, pencils and other art materials to see how people would react to them in different environments. ​




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I took people's comments as 'data' and grouped and analysed it - creating new artworks based on these groupings. 

Through the project I monitored the toilet doors closely and watched and recorded the written conversations as they emerged and grew on the paper. 


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All works on this website are subject to the following creative commons license. 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
  • About
  • Art
    • Future Cities : 2100
    • Electric Connections
    • Modern Love Project
    • Public Toilet Project
    • Project Touch
    • Project Wilderness >
      • Arctic Light
    • Project skies >
      • Moon Landing
      • Pink Moon
      • Northern Lights
      • Flights of fire
    • Cities from Space
  • RESIDENCY
    • RESIDENCY INFO
  • Contact