LAURA MELISSA WILLIAMS
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THE   Modern   Love    PROJECT

A  project  about  love  and  Connection  in  our  modern  world

This project seeks to explore, understand and highlight 
what is happening on the front lines of love. 



​

1. 
Crowdsourcing dating experiences
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A book of 40 poems about finding love in a modern world.  They were crowdsourced: a call was put out on social media and within a week I had 38 poems in the collection.

People submitted from around the world including the UK, France, Cuba and New Zealand. Almost all spontaneously described the act of writing their poem/s as ‘cathartic’. 


Responses came from 9 heterosexual women, 1 gay woman and one couple. Despite my best efforts, only one man replied to my open call. In the future I would love to increase the diversity of the people submitting. 

The poems were part of a digital projected installation running simultaneously with an audio recording of the poems, alongside the display of the physical book. 
2. ​
Exploring new behaviours
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Ghosting: Suddenly ceasing all communication with someone you’re dating, but no longer wish to date. 
Simmering: Reducing communications and dates to the absolute minimum needed to still keep someone there as a backup. 
Icing: Manufacturing a reason to suspend a relationship, a la, “I’m too busy.” Becoming cold with someone. 

A video installation illustrating these emerging behaviours visually. 
3. ​
Heart matters
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Our hearts are fragile.
They change with time.
Break, heal, break, heal.  
Scar tissue.
Often the fragile become the most hardened.
These are matters of the heart.
​The heart matters.

Broken Heart Syndrome is real: our hearts can temporarily change shape after a trauma (such as splitting with a loved one).
​If that can happen after one trauma, what happens to us if we experience lots of little traumas? Do our hearts change shape? Do our hearts harden?

To create this sculpture I aimed to grow plant roots into the shape of a human heart to then transform into a hardened state with Plaster of Paris. 
4. ​
A cultural virus
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Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become the culture. 

​
I am interested in how behaviours turn into cultures. Even 'nice' people who generally treat others well can start to adopt less empathic behaviours if they themselves have been spurned too many times. In this way, new cultures are formed.

How do we break this vicious cycle? How can we take better ownership and accountability of our own behaviours?
​
5. ​
The incomplete manifesto for dating​
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​Often it’s not what’s done to us that hurts, but how something is done. 
​Let’s change how we treat each other. 
Date kind, date better. 

With a new rulebook and a changing culture people are losing their way about how to treat each other. This incomplete Manifesto for dating was co-created to provide a guide for how to date well. 


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​
​Modern Love Project overview
​© COPYRIGHT 2018. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
​
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
  • Field Journal
  • Contact
  • RESIDENCY
    • RESIDENCY INFO