This project was an insane 7 months, but I’m afraid it is starting to slow down. My professors say work on something until it feels like you’re beating a dead horse. I will try to continue to post new receipts as I have the time. I thought it might be interesting to open this up to anyone to send in their own receipts with commentary, but I feel like it would be too much of a clone of PostSecret and Found.

I guess I will stop hiding behind my Visa Card XXXX and a first name for those of you that haven’t already stalked me down through search engines.

Hello, my name is Riley Harmon, and I thank you for the last seven months.

]]> http://proofpurchase.com/dear-friends/feed/ http://proofpurchase.com/note/ http://proofpurchase.com/note/#comments Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:04:37 +0000 admin http://proofpurchase.com/note/

I will be at the two opening night gatherings, Jan 11 + 12, for anyone that wants to meet me, curse me, or kiss me.

When I first started this in July/August I had just gotten my first moleskine. The summer had been a rough one mentally. I had spent the vast majority of it working and sitting around. I would work, sleep, and eat. It was the little moments of the day, getting a bite to eat, a cup of coffee, etc that would give me a moment to meditate on whatever was on my mind. The moleskine was the way for me to escape the day, writing in it every chance I got.

I was sitting in a coffee shop one day and didn’t have my moleskine with me, so I began playing with the receipt in my hand as an object, imagining everything it was and could be. I started to doodle on it, and then I wrote on it: “Why did I buy this cup of coffee? Probably so I had an excuse to talk to girl at the counter.” I since lost that receipt somewhere in the depths of my car floorboard.

Receipts had already been piling up in the back of my car. I was too much of a pack rat to throw them out, or maybe too lazy, or maybe too busy to care. I don’t know. I noticed I started writing on them more and more, and saving them. In my moleskine, I wrote a note to myself. “Write on receipts, leave them around campus for people to find, become completely self-aware so others will too.” I started doing that.

Then came fall semester. I was taking a language and art course as apart of my major. The professor wanted us to keep a journal from day to day that would either become a project unto itself or serve to foster ideas and propel us into new other projects. This is where this website came about. I decided that I would document one year of my life through every single receipt I get, and post them online for the world to see hoping that my self-awareness, and honesty might allow others to start asking their own questions/feelings, or confirm answers to question/feelings they already had.

In the beginning, these receipts came to serve a raw need for myself; a need to express an ephemeral feeling that would be lost just as fast as the receipt itself would fade (thermal paper). From there it seemed to skyrocket into an insane roller coaster of consumption, vulnerability, and exhibition.

In August, I bought the domain and launched the site. I began testing many different designs and ways the viewer could experience the receipts. Eventually I settled on a blog backbone because of RSS and the nature of how blogs spread. August came and went, I wasn’t really thinking about the site much, but when September came, I noticed a huge bandwidth spike on my server, and didn’t understand why, until I started looking at referrals and traffic.

Since the launch of the site, various local publications, and explosions of traffic, my life changed in subtle but interesting ways. I became more and more conscious, of every single thought, experience, feeling, and action. I gained clarity in my thought. But ironically, as soon as that clarity appeared, so did a very apparent tension. I noticed that my original intentions had changed.

Because I had built a habit of receipt writing, uploading, and checking traffic, this project began to consume my very essence. My own consumption led to consume me. As you the viewer consume my thoughts, feelings, and what I buy - I too, consumed you. Something about the hits and traffic sent parts of my ego flying. I strengthened neural connections due to the habits checking traffic, and it became apart of my everyday. No longer was the project an outlet for expression, it was a way of living.

I made the mistake of telling several people in my life about the project, and fear that this project destroyed or otherwise changed profoundly relationships, friendships, and opportunities. I think that in some ways those people used this site as leverage against me, trying to gain some sense of control over me. In other ways I think some of those people consumed the project and my relationship to them, fantasizing about being some kind of muse. At any rate, this changed how I could interact with people. As much as the truth will set you free, it will also imprison you.

As the year comes to a close and we reach halfway, I feel I have a choice. I can stop here or continue this process of consciousness and ephemeral expression. Being the nature of myself to complete a task, I feel I have to continue. I feel I need to complete the project. I have recently been given 2 offers for publishing, so I feel that the year needs to be completed.

I do not regret starting this project, but I feel that it is important to be conscious of everything about it, including how it has affected me and how I have evolved. It was and still is an experiment, something that is process oriented. I feel that it was important for me to go through the trials that this project offered me, socially and mentally. In more ways than any reader or anyone I talk to will ever know, I have learned a wealth of understanding from doing this.

So my friends, where do I go from here?