The Power of 10

High Desert - Town of Yucca Valley Outside of Joshua Tree National Park, C A

In middle school I had to watch a short movie called Powers of Ten. It is a short science movie about how small things are and how far away things get when you move closer or away from a subject at multiples of 10. You can see the movie below via Youtube.



At the SPE West conference last fall, one of the artists, Nigel Poor talked about her need to use counting, categorizing and cataloging stuff as a basis for her art. One of her projects was The Relative Value of Things. In this project, she cataloged things she was discarding, donating, etc. in an effort to reduce her clutter. The items were not garbage, but actual things she had been holding on to for future needs. She photographed the items as part of the catalog. In the effort she learned a lot about her own personal tastes, needs and history that can be told through what she had. I suggest you listen to her narration of the project on her website.

I am a lazy pack rat. I am not the type who walks past an old electric appliance, magazine, or other discarded or discounted item and think about all the things I can do with it, then stores it away to be forgotten. I am the type who, through living life, accumulates the daily detritis of magazines, books, tools, clothes, body weight, photographic equipment, mementos, and other stuff and is too lazy to cull the stuff to a manageable level. Over the past 40 years, that has piled up to be lots of stuff.

As a 2010 resolution I am going to steal her idea and mutate it into an introspective artistic project and a practical adventure in reducing. Every week, I am going to find 10 things to get rid of. Like Poor's project, they have to be things other than garbage. Things that come in groups will count as one item, like a box of 10 golf balls. I will give my friends opportunities to take them, or I will donate them to the local Goodwill, sell them at a garage sale, or throw them in the garbage or recycling bin.

Over time I want to see if I learn something about myself from the objects I caste off. I will take photos of the items to record all of them. What will it say about my habits, needs, perversions, desires, perceived needs, and tastes?

In the beginning, it will be hard to hold back from getting rid of more than 10 things at a time. I have so much stuff. That is where the power of 10 comes in. (Yes, I know I am not multiplying the number of objects by 10 (10, 100, 1000, 10000...) so it is not a mathematically correct name. ) The Power of 10 is that by 6 months, or 26 weeks, I will have gotten rid of 260 things. That is a lot. By the end of 2010, 520 things. It will be interesting.

It will also be interesting to see what I feel I can part with and what can not be culled out of my life. As I look around, I see many things screaming to go. First stop, my office.